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WINONA 

TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 



J 



DELIVERED AT 



WINONA LAKE, INDIANA 



AT THE 



FIRST ANNUAL 

TEMPERANCE CONFERENCE 

JULY 12 TO 18, 1908 



Copyrighted by 
GEORGE R. STUART AND EDWIN A. KNAPP 

Winona Lake, Indiana 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

COPYRIGHT OFFICE. 

No registration of title of this book 
as a preliminary to copyright protec- 
tion has been found. 

Forwarded to Order Division .j/uflT*.] Oj-AiJi-^—. 

(Date) 

(Apr. 5, 1901—5,000.) 







CONTENTS 



% Page 

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON? 9 

EX-GOVERNOR ROBERT B. GLENN 

AN IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT . . . . . . . 17 

EX-GOVERNOR J. FRANK HANLY 

THE SAFE SIDE OF LIFE FOR YOUNG MEN .... 47 
HON. H. W. BAIN 

FAIR PLAY 55 

HON. JAMES A. TATE 

CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP 65 

REV. CHARLES B. GALLOWAY. D.D. 

"WHERE IS ABEL, THY BROTHER?" 77 

REV. E. L. EATON. D.D. 

THE PROBLEM OF DRUNKENNESS 93 

HON. OLIVER W. STEWART 

ATTITUDE OF COLORED PEOPLE OF THE SOUTH TOWARD 

THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT . . . . Ill 

REV. H. H. PROCTOR. D.D. 

THE SALOON AND THE ETHICAL REVIVAL . . . .117 

DR. CLINTON N. HOWARD 

REASONS FOR THE SOUTH'S ATTITUDE ON TEMPERANCE . 125 
EUGENE M. WEBB 

CANADA'S FIGHT AGAINST THE LIQUOR EVIL ■■ . . 137 

CONTROLLER F. S. SPENCE 

THE WORLD MOVES ON ....... 147 

PROF. CHARLES SCANLON 

"REMEMBER THE ATHENIANS" 159 

MISS BELLE KEARNEY 




DR. GEORGE R. STUART 



FOREWORD 



mHE ADDRESSES contained in this book were given 
at the first annual Temperance Conference held at 
Winona Lake, Indiana, July 12 to 18. The interest 
taken in this Conference and the enthusiasm 
shown was so great that at the close of the Conference 
Dr. George R. Stuart, the Director, thought it would be a 
good plan to publish some of the leading addresses- in 
book form. Had we anticipated the greatness of this 
Conference on its opening day we could have secured 
these speeches so that this book could have been printed 
immediately after the Conference closed. Many of the 
speakers did not have their addresses in manuscript form 
and it was necessary to have them give their addresses 
over again to a special stenographer. The delay in pub- 
lishing this book was caused by the publishers', inability 
in securing the manuscript until this late date. 

The second annual Temperance Conference, to be held 
at Winona Lake, August 1 to 7, 1909, promises to accom- 
plish much for the cause of Temperance. As before, 
George R. Stuart, D. D., of Cleveland, Tennessee, will be 
the Director. If this book is appreciated by the temper- 
ance enthusiasts, the addresses of the next Conference 
will be published in full immediately after the close of the 
Conference. 



aaowaao 



ED 







WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON? 




By Ex-Gov. Robert B. Glenn, of North Carolina. 

I come from the South to the great West in the interest 
of what I consider one of the greatest causes now before 
the American people, .and I only trust that something I 
may say may arouse you as never he- 
fore to do all in your power to drive 
the curse of strong drink out of the 
borders of the State of Indiana. I do 
not intend to come under false pre- 
tenses. I have not always been an 
absolute teetotaler. In the years that 
have passed, like some of you, per- 
haps, and quoting St. Paul as my au- 
thority, I sometimes took a little "for 
my stomach's sake and my oft infirm- 
ities," and I am sorry to say they 
became sometimes "very oft," but I can truly say that for 
the last three years not a drop of strong, drink has passed 
my lips, and never again will I take one drop as a beverage 
into my stomach, 

I can give you the reason for the faith that is in me. 
The names of seven young men, my college friends, come 
flitting before me as I speak — young men of ability, the 
latches of whose shoes I was not worthy intellectually to 
unloose. Where are they today? Three are in their 
graves; two in the asylum, and two a disgrace to my State. 
All laid low by this terrible demon. 

I have seen the young maiden of my manhood hours 
going out in gladness with the man of her choice, with 
elasticity in her step, roses in her cheeks, and a song on 
her lips. I see her today, prematurely old, the elasticity 

9 



10 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

gone, the roses faded, the song forever hushed, listening 
and praying, yet dreading to hear her husband's returning 
footsteps, not knowing whether he comes drunk or sober. 
I have seen widowed mothers (and I know what a widowed 
mother means, for my father lay dead on the field of battle, 
leaving three helpless boys dependent on a good mother), 
as with clasped hands and eyes raised to heaven they 
prayed, "Where is my wandering boy tonight?" 

I have seen the hats taken off the heads, the shoes off 
the feet, the clothes off the backs of little girls and boys, 
going to feed the insatiate appetites of their drunken fa- 
thers. I have gone to the State penitentiary and seen 
young men, strong and well born as we, and heard them, 
while briney tears rolled down their faces, tell how, in a 
moment of passion, while under the influence of liquor, 
they imbued their hands in the blood of their fellowmen, 
and now had to spend a lifetime in a cell in the peniten- 
tiary. 

Men and women of Indiana, I have seen these things. I 
know they exist. I have felt these things, as many of you 
have felt them, for this monster has gone into every com- 
munity and taken the sweetest, fairest, strongest and best, 
and destroyed them. Therefore I appeal to you to help rid 
this country of this mighty and terrible curse. 

I make this challenge wherever I go: I defy any man to 
stand by my side, with lifted hand, calling on God to wit- 
ness that he speaks the truth, and say that strong drink is 
a blessing to him, to his wife, to his little children, to his 
church, to his state, and an honor to his God. Why don't 
you say it? Because you know you cannot. You know 
that this curse brings mourning instead of rejoicing, tears 
instead .of laughter, rags instead of clothing, insanity in- 
stead .of strong minds, disease instead of health, death 
instead of life, damnation instead of salvation. Then how 
can you use your influence and vote for this curse. You, 
who say you are followers of Jesus Christ, and know that 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 11 

this curse destroys the body, weakens the mind and black- 
ens the soul — how can you stand for it? You, wno call 
yourselves good citizens, and know it produces crime, pov- 
erty, insanity, disease and death — how can you vote for it? 
Fathers and mothers, for the sake of your children, your 
sons and your daughters, how can you favor something 
that destroys their womanhood and manhood and makes 
them weak instead of strong? But I hear you say, we want 
to hear you answer our arguments; preachers tell us such 
things as you are just talking about. What are your argu- 
ments? First, you say that if we abolish whisky it will de- 
stroy business. Before answering this question let me ask 
you one: What have you in the top of your heads, brains 
or sawdust? If you have sawdust, my arguments will have 
no effect, but if you have brains, I know I can convince 
you. 

Having strong drink in a community or a state does not 
help business. If strong drink helps business, why do the 
railroads erect Y. M. C. A. chapels and churches along 
their lines instead of saloons and distilleries, and why do 
they advertise for young men who do not drink, instead of 
drunkards for conductors and engineers? Because they 
know that drunken employes would bring about collisions 
and wrecks, and ruin their business. Why do you not 
engage drunken surgeons and physicians to use the deadly 
knife on your wife, or mix the medicine for your children? 
Because you feel that the drunken surgeon may take her 
life, and the sot of a physician might make a poison 
instead of an innocent medicine. Why do farmers not 
advertise for drunken employes to work their crops? Be- 
cause they know they would turn their crops upside down 
and ruin their business. 

I give you two examples: There are two men in your 
county. One drinks, the other does not. They go to your 
town to sell their produce. Where does the drunken man 
go first? To the saloon. He takes one drink; calls for 



12 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

another; then his friends come in and he treats them, and 
they get drunk. He feels he is the richest man in town; 
he wastes his money — throws it away, gambles with it, 
and gratifies his passion to waste all he has. He forgets 
his w T ife who helped make the crops, and his little chil- 
dren who worked it by day. He forgets the needed farm- 
ing utensils and furniture, and only remembers his miser- 
able stomach, and his desire for a "good time," and in the 
evening he loads himself on, or is loaded on his wagon, 
with only whisky on his person and in his stomach, and 
starts home, hollering like a fool. His wife and children 
come out to meet him and ask for the dress and other 
things he promised to bring. His conscience smiting 
him, knowing he has done wrong, he abuses his wife, and 
perhaps strikes the children he has promised to love and 
protect. God pity the wife of a drunken husband, and 
God in tender mercy shield the little children who have to 
look for succor to a drunken father! 

The other man sells his crop, and he remembers his 
wife, who has gotten up at 5 o'clock to cook his breakfast, 
and he says: "I'll get the good woman a nice frock," and 
he goes to the dry goods store and buys the best dress he 
can find. He then remembers that the little boys and girls 
have helped in the crop, and he buys shoes and hats and 
little clothes for them, helping these merchants. Then he 
says: "I do not know when God may take me and leave 
my wife and children helpless," and he insures his life for 
their benefit. Then he remembers that he has lived hard, 
and he buys groceries, and says we will invite the neigh- 
bors in next Sunday and have a feast day, thus helping the 
grocery merchant. Then he remembers needed furniture 
and farming utensils and finds the man who deals in these 
things, and with a wagon loaded up with things he has 
bought in your town he goes home, happy, contented and 
sober, to his wife and children, with things for the home 
and things for the farm, and there is peace, joy and pros- 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 13 

perity in the home of the sober man. And yet they say 
strong drink helps business! 

A man takes one drink a day at 10 cents. That is $3 a 
month, $36 a year. That would buy him a suit of clothes. 
If he drinks a dollar a day, that is $30 a month, $360 a year 
gone into his stomach, and no good done. Drink up 15 
cents, and you can't buy a beefsteak for breakfast; a dol- 
lar's worth, and a good cotton hat is gone; 75 cents, and 
you have no shirt; $4 and you have lost your coat; $2.50 
and you are without pants. And here I will stop. I will 
go no further. And yet they say* whisky helps business ! 

See the towns where there is no liquor sold and you will 
find thrift, enterprise and industry- See the whisky towns 
and you will find drunkenness, crime, poverty, ruin and 
death. 

The question is answered. Strong drink can not help 
business. Good roads, schools, churches, against saloons 
and distilleries, this is the issue. 

But, you say, our second argument is prohibition, and 
does not prohibit. No prohibition law absolutely prohibits. 

I want to call your attention to the greatest scene that 
the world has ever known. God in His Wisdom and 
grandeur, left the beauties of Heaven, and, amidst thunder 
and lightning, descended to Mount Sinai, telling His ser- 
vant Moses to draw nigh and take off His shoes, for the 
ground on which he stood was holy ground. Then He 
gave to Moses two tables of stone, upon which with His 
Almighty finger he had written the ten commandments. 

I hold these commandments up to you today, and I read 
these terrible words: "Thou shalt not kill." "Thou shalt 
not steal." "Thou shalt not commit adultery," "Thou shalt 
not bear false witness." 

Do we steal? Do we commit adultery? Do we kill? 
You know we do. Then shall the ministers of God stop 
preaching God's ten commandment because they do not 
absolutely prohibit? God forbid. 



14 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

Go to your statute books, see the laws against any 
crimes? Are they violated? Go to the court house and 
watch the trials and you will be bound to answer "yes." 
Then shall we tear down our court houses and abolish our 
judges and juries? Only a fool will say do this, and yet, 
because the prohibition laws do not absolutely prohibit, 
you say have an open state and an open town. I say to 
you, after mature reflection, that the wettest dry town in 
Indiana is ten thousand times better than the dryest wet 
town in America. And, furthermore, I say to you that if 
the officers of the law from governor to constable will do 
their duty the prohibition laws against selling whisky will 
prohibit. Arrest these men who violate these laws, convict 
them, put them on the roads, and make them build good 
roads for us to walk over. Punish them for their crime; 
enforce the Law. Prohibition will prohibit. 

The third argument is, How can we educate our children 
and pave our streets without the money received from 
license? 

Admitting for a moment (though it is not true) that it 
would cost us more if we did not have license, let me put 
over in one hand the 10 cents, or the $1, or the $5, or the 
$100 you save by the license system. Look at it! Then 
put over in your other hand the body, mind and soul of 
your little girl and boy. Would you like to save 10 cents, 
or any other amount by risking a temptation that might 
ruin those dear to your heart? Is there a man in this 
audience who would value $1,000 against his boy's soul! 
If we love our boys there is not money enough in the world 
to stand against their soul. There isn't one word of truth in 
it. We do not save anything by the license tax, for if you 
put the license, tax in one column, and then put in the 
other the added cost of insanity, crime, poverty, suffering, 
disease and death, caused by whisky, the cost is ten thou- 
sand times more than what we save. It cost last year in 
the United States $349,000,000 to educate our boys and 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 15 

girls; $25,500,000 to break the bread of life to dying men 
and women; $5,500,000 to send the Gospel to the heathen 
across the water. The strong drink bill in the United 
States last year was $1,549,000,000, and add to this the ad- 
ditional cost of grain destroyed, of insanity, crime, poverty, 
disease and death, $1,100,000,000, and we have $2,649,000,- 
000 destroyed and wasted last year — more than the gross 
earnings of all the railroads in the United States and ten 
times enough to educate all our boys and girls. All gone 
for nothing but to return as its harvest 80 per cent, of all 
crime; 33% per cent, of all insanity; 50 per cent, of all pov- 
erty; and in the United States last year 160,000 people died 
from strong drink, thus showing the cost of this drink 
blight to our beloved nation. 

It is said of Lord Erskine that on one occasion he stood 
before the court of King's Bench to argue a case that, if 
gained, meant honor and wealth, and, if lost, meant pover- 
ty and disaster. He was seen to hesitate, as if he were 
going to sit down, then raised his eyes to heaven, and first 
slowly and deliberately, then with gathering power and 
logic, he swept away the arguments of the opposing coun- 
sel, until at last in a peroration, perhaps the most eloquent 
ever heard, he carried conviction to the hearts of his 
judges, who arose as one man and said, "We give the ver- 
dict to Erskine." When he came down to his seat his 
friends gathered around him and asked how he managed 
to speak as he did? Was he not afraid in the presence of 
that great court? He said: "Listen, and I will tell you. 
You saw me stop, and as I stopped I heard the sweet voice 
of my wife as she whispered in my ear, 'Speak, Erskine, 
speak; it means bread and meat for me and our little one.' 
Then I heard the voice of my little 4-year-old daughter as 
she whispered in my other ear: 'Speak, papa, speak; it 
means so much to mamma and me. Speak, papa, speak.' 
Then I raised my eyes to heaven and said, 'God give me 
strength!' and I spoke for those I loved." 



16 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

Friends, as I come to you today I, too, hear sweet voices 
whispering in my ear. I hear the voice of the wife of the 
poor drunkard, saying: "Speak, Mr. Glenn, speak; it means 
bread and meat for me and my little children." And I 
hear the voices of the little children, crying: "Sipeak, 
please, sir, speak; it means so much for poor mamma and 
us." I hear widowed mothers saying to me: "Mr. Glenn, 
some words you may speak may fall on the ears of my 
wandering boy, and before it is too late bring him back to 
home and mother. Please, sir, speak." And before com- 
ing here I asked God to give me strength to speak, and I 
have spoken because I plead for those I love. I have never 
seen you before. I will never see you again, but the same 
blood flows in your veins and mine. We are all created 
alike in the image- of God, and I come from my warm 
Southland with a heart full of love for each of you, and 
speak for you and your children. 

Where are you in this great fight? Are you on the side 
of temperance or drunkenness? For upbuilding, or tearing 
down. For God, or the devil? Under the white flag of 
temperance and purity, or the black flag of ruin and 
death? 

Your forefathers in 1775 struggled for independence 
against Great Britain. From 1861 to 1865 the men of the 
North and the men of the South, in deadly fraternal war, 
struggled against each other as never men did before. 
They were heroes brave and true. Thank God no deadly 
strife of this kind is on today. But a battle is on, and the 
issue is the souls of our children. On which side are you? 
Is the issue worth fighting for? A soul is so precious that 
hell gapes when one is lost, and heaven rejoices when it 
is redeemed, and God gave His own Son to redeem them. 
Then if souls are worth so much, can you not arouse your- 
selves and try to save them from the curse of strong drink. 

Arouse, you men and women of Indiana, and to the work 
for God and humanity. 



AN IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT 



By Ex.Gov. J. Frank Hanly, cf Indiana. 

From the beginning of civilization to the present hour 
there has been waged an irrepressible, never-ending con- 
flict between the forces of Good and the troops of Evil. 
Century after century it has been 
waged; in land after land it has ebbed 
and flowed; a phase reaching a cli- 
max here, another phase a climax 
there. Appeal has sometimes been 
made to reason; sometimes to the 
sword. Sometimes victory has come 
through peaceful revolution; some- 
times through the carnage and the 
desolation of the battlefield. Some- 
times the contest has been led by a 
Martin Luther or a John Wesley; 
sometimes by an Oliver Cromwell or an Abraham Lincoln. 
Sometimes the immediate end contended for has been the 
liberation of the limbs and bodies of men; sometimes the 
freedom of the minds and the souls of men. But the con- 
flict in some form has gone ever on, enduring and unend- 
ing The great Civil War that but a generation ago so 
nearly disrupted the Union and destroyed the solidarity of 
the nation was but a phase of it. And now we are en- 
gaged in yet another phase of it, peaceable, happily, but no 
less irrepressible and inevitable than that. 

Recently great progress has been made. Indeed, so 
much has been accomplished, so many battles have been 
fought and won that some sanguine souls seem to see the 
beginning of the end of the latest phase of an age-long 

17 




18 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

conflict. The final, consummation of hopes long deferred 
seems at hand, the hour of jubilee is all but come. Much 
has been accomplished. Much more is labout to be 
achieved. But amid the joy and gladness things done and 
now in doing bring, I pause to call you back from jubila- 
tion to the battlefield. Final victory is not yet ours. The 
conflict still rages. The .impact of marching, struggling 
hosts is not yet past. We must still be up and doing. 
There are still crosses to bear and crowns to earn. The 
present is not the hour of jubilee. He who thinks so does 
but deceive himself. Before that hour comes many am- 
bitions will be crucified, many party affiliations will be 
changed, many men will fall, many battles will be fought, 
some of which will be lost, some won. The path to final 
victory lies through sacrifice. But we will not pause be- 
cause of that. We'll gird ourselves anew and march 
toward the sound of the guns. We are a Christian people. 
Our institutions are Christian. Our literature is Christian. 
Our thought is Christian. Our purpose Christian. And we 
will not be deterred because our pathway lies through new 
Gethsemanes. The Christian church had its birth amid 
scenes of grief and tragic sacrifice. The scourging of the 
Savior, the scene in the Garden, His crucifixion, the agony 
of His final dissolution, are striking evidences of this truth. 
The unnatural death, one after another, of all His chosen 
disciples, save one or two, accentuates it, and the martyr- 
dom of their followers on cross and gibbet, in dungeon 
and arena during the early centuries certifies to its verity. 
Consecration, sacrifice, atonement! These are the pillars 
upon which the Christian church is founded. Beneath 
them, deep and abiding as the centuries, is the all-perva- 
sive, all-inclusive love of the Father. His love for man 
was the impelling cause of the consecration and sacrifice 
out of which the Christian church arose. Indeed, sacrifice 
impelled by love began with God Himself. He "so loved 
the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoso- 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 19 

ever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlast- 
ing life." 

Thus commissioned and thus impelled, the Savior came 
to earth to redeem and reclaim the sons of men. His path- 
way led Him through Gethsemane up to Calvary — the one 
marking the consecration, the other the atonement His 
mission required. Through the Garden and the Cross and 
the prayer and consecration and sacrifice incident to them 
He drew His disciples unto Him and cemented between 
them ties of affection that separation and persecution 
could not break. Then He commissioned them in His 
name and sent them forth, and they, in turn, through 
prayer and consecration and sacrifice drew unto them a 
multitude of men and women whom neither sword, nor 
cross, nor flame, nor mortal fear could turn away. It was 
these that John, in exile on the lonely Isle of Patmos, saw 
in his wonderful vision of the Apocalypse and of whom he 
wrote: "These are they which came out of great tribula- 
tion, and have washed their robes and made them white in 
the blood of the Lamb." 

The Savior was crucified? Yes. His apostles met vio- 
lent deaths? Yes. Their followers were stoned and killed 
and burned? Yes. But the cause for which they stood 
survived. It could neither be killed, nor burned, nor cruci- 
fied From the piled stones, from the spilled blood, from 
the scattered ashes, the church arose, aflame with inspired 
purpose, glorified and triumphant. So it has always been; 
so it will always be. No just cause ever dies! It may be 
temporarily set back. It may sometimes lose a battle. Its 
champions may be scattered. Its advocates for the time 
may be silenced. Its defenders may fall. Their ashes may 
be given to the winds. Its followers may be killed and 
burned, but out of their ashes and their blood the cause 
itself will arise anew. 

"Truth crushed to earth shall rise again, 
The eternal years of God are hers." 



20 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

And so with this great cause which I now plead. The 
men who stand for it may fall. Those who now defend it 
may cease to be. They who today administer government 
in its name may go out of public life and cease forever to 
have to do with public affairs, but the cause will remain 
and God will raise up for it new friends, new advocates 
and new defenders, until in the fullness of His own time 
He shall crown it with victory glorious and enduring. In 
the struggle we may lose a battle now and then, but we'll 
not lose the war. You remember in the tragic days back 
yonder when the Nation battled for its life and for the 
solidarity of the Union we lost some battles. We lost Bull 
Run. We all but lost Shiloh. We lost Chancellorsville. 
We lost Fredericksburg. But we did not lose the war. 
Out of the carnage and the sacrifice of Bull Run, of Shiloh, 
of Chancellorsville, and of Fredericksburg there came the 
consecration of high resolve — a sublime moral exaltation — 
that later gave us Appomattox. Appomattox with its vic- 
tory! Appomattox with its surrender! Appomattox with 
its peace! Appomattox with its reconciliation. Appomat- 
tox with its new birth of freedom for my country ! 

Centuries have come and gone since the Crucifixion. Be- 
tween then and now the years rise high. Governments 
have fallen and institutions have crumbled. Nations have 
arisen and disappeared. But the gentle Gospel of the 
Christ remains — the most potent power in all the world — 
bringing to the people of the present age a new earth and 
a new civilization. 

In the history of the race a hundred years is but a brief 
period and yet less than a hundred years ago there was no 
government anywhere among men that did not tolerate 
human slavery. But today there is no government any- 
where among civilized men that permits it. The progress 
of less than a hundred years! Surely, 



WIXOXA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 21 

"Thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs. 
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the 
suns :*' 

The days of "the shedding of the blood of the saints" are 
past. And with them have gone something of the devotion, 
something of the consecration and something of the mili- 
tant spirit which in the early days gave the Christian 
church its power and glory and made it a flaming sword. 
This is unfortunate. It ought not to be. It need not be. 
I do not deny the church's present power nor that progress 
in certain directions is being made. That I admit. I con- 
cede that taken as a whole the church never exerted as 
forceful an influence along ethical lines as it does today. 
It never taught man's duty in respect to himself and the 
rights of others as effectively as it is teaching it now. It 
never ministered as tenderly to his temporal needs. It 
never responded as quickly or as willingly or as generously 
to his cry of physical pain or of bodily suffering. It never 
did as much to dispel ignorance and spread knowledge. It 
never was as charitable. It never was as altruistic. It 
never was as tolerant of differing creeds and sects. In- 
deed, it adds daily to the sum of man's temporal joys, but 
seems to grow less effective to meet the needs of his inner 
life. It seems more concerned about the welfare of man's 
body than it is about the salvation of his immortal soul. 
Its ministries are becoming more ethical and less spiritual. 

Do you know what the Christian church lacks today? It 
lacks intensity of conviction. It lacks the power that 
comes from great conviction. If the Christian church was 
stirred and inspired with the power of a great conviction 
on the question of the open saloon, it could take this 
nation for temperance within half a decade. It lacks con- 
secration. It lacks the inspiration of the Holy -Ghost, 
the unction of Pentecostal fire. It has too many tin sol- 
diers in its ranks; too many members who are militant 
only on dress parade. It is too patient with sin, too tol- 



22 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

erant of evil. It is too placid, too well pleased with itself, 
too well satisfied with, the world as it finds it. It is near 
forgetting that the Kingdom of God is a spiritual kingdom; 
that God Himself is a spirit, and that they who worship 
Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth; that God's 
church on earth must be a militant church, its members 
militant Christians; that there are crosses to bear and 
crowns to win today as in the olden time. I would not 
have less of the ethical nor less of the altruistic than the 
church now has, but I would have more of those essential 
elements of power and greatness which I have named. 
I speak now not as a churchman, but as the Governor of 
this great Commonwealth, after years of observation and 
experience in public affairs, and I voice a profound convic- 
tion when I declare to you the country's need of a militant 
church — its need of a living, virile Christianity — its need of 
consecrated men and women, men and women who not 
only hate unrighteousness, but who are willing to bear 
arms against unrighteousness. In this great conflict in 
which we are now engaged there is place for Christian 
men and women only on one side. If there is present a 
Christian man or woman who does not know which side 
that is and is doubtful as to his duty in this behalf, I beg of 
him to go to his closet — the secret place of his home — 
and there in the presence of God and his own soul take an 
inventory of his religious assets. He is more nearly bank- 
rupt, than he is aware. 

The world's need of a militant church is manifold and 
enduring, but if there were no other there is such need in 
a single direction in this our own land as to call into 
exercise every element of strength possessed and to inspire 
to as "high and to as holy a service as the church has 
ever rendered. Indeed, the Christian church of America 
has an oft-repeated challenge lying even now at its feet. 
And unless it runs away there's fighting to be done. 



WINONA TEMPERANCE AD-DRESSES 23 

The field is nation-wide. The issue is of transcendent 
import, involving the welfare of society, the faithful ad- 
ministration of government, the incorruptibility of Ameri- 
can citizenship, and the well-being of both the bodies and 
the souls of men and women. 

The domain to be fought for is this Republic, its man- 
hood, its womanhood, its childhood, its homes and its in- 
stitutions — institutions founded amid tears and sacrifice, 
institutions loved by the fathers and revered by their sons, 
institutions for which men have died at the battle's front 
fondly hoping thereby to preserve them to their children to 
the latest generation. The trophy to be struggled for is a 
stainless flag — the banner of the free, ensign of a Nation 
redeemed and glorified. The foe is the organized liquor 
traffic of America. It is an enemy well worth while. It 
has great wealth. It is intrenched behind property of 
great value. It reaches the financial interest of many men. 
And today it is desperate — prepared for anything. It 
respects no law that adversely affects it, human or divine. 
In this Commonwealth it violates every statute made for 
its regulation, restraint or control. In Maine and Kansas 
it tramples upon the most solemn constitutional compacts. 
In New Jersey it sends infernal machines through the 
national mails to strike down the head of the State be- 
cause he seeks the enforcement of laws duly enacted for 
the welfare of her citizens. The rules of civilized warfare 
are to it a meaningless jingle of idle words. It is an out- 
law. Its banner is a black flag. It respects neither age 
nor sex. It has no religion but the greed of gain; no love 
that the lust of gold does not corrupt; no pity that avarice 
does not strangle. It is marshalling its hosts for a con- 
flict the impact of which will shake the land. And the 
Christian church of America must meet it or run away, 
and she cannot run away. Her transcendent past, the 
memory of her martyred dead preclude her running away. 



24 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

No! She must stay and she must fight! Aye! And she 
will stay and she will fight, not one, but a hundred battles 
before she flees the field or yields a single point. But, 
hear me, if she fights she will need men, not in Heaven, 
but in Indiana. There is room in Heaven for good men, 
yes, but there is more need of them in Indiana. In Heaven 
a good man may sing songs of praise and wear a crown. 
That I concede is a great business, but in Indiana a good 
man, if he possesses the power of a great conviction on 
this question, may bear a cross and earn a crown. And 
that I hold is a greater business. Need men! Yes, men of 
moral fiber, of sound judgment, of exalted, inflexible pur- 
pose and dauntless courage. 

i "Men whom the lust of office does not kill ; 
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy ; 
Men who possess opinion and a will ; 
Men who have honor, men who will not lie ; 
Men who can stand before a demagogue, 
And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking ! 
Tall men, sun-erowned, who live above the fog 
In public duty and in private thinking!" 

In the last few weeks I have sometimes wondered if 
there are any such men left in Indiana. And then, re- 
membering the splendid past of this great people — remem- 
bering the marvelous answer they made in treasure and in 
men to Abraham Lincoln when in the storm and stress of 
war he asked for money and for men to maintain the Na- 
tion's solidarity and save the Union's life — remembering 
that in all the great conflict that ensued there was no bat- 
tlefield where the spilled blood of Indiana's sons did not 
hallow its trampled soil — I have made answer for her peo- 
ple, and said: "Yes, I will find such men in Indiana, and I 
will go to them and I will make my appeal to them." 
Abraham Lincoln! Let us think of him a minute. Child of 
poverty; Freedom's advocate; President of the Republic; 
defender of the Union; emancipator of a race; savior of a 
Nation; the sweetest, gentlest, kindest character in all the 
tide of time since the Christ returned to Glory Abraham 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 25 

Lincoln! We know him as we know no other great man 
in human history and yet he remains to us an insoluble 
mystery. We cannot reconcile what he was with the 
depths from whence he came, nor what he did, nor what he 
said, with the narrow limitations of his life. 

Born in abject poverty, of a shiftless, purposeless par- 
entage; cradled amid the solitudes of a primeval forest, in 
a floorless, windowless, doorless cabin, surrounded by an 
environment calculated to stifle his ambition and dwarf 
his soul; the speech of his parents and his early asso- 
ciates so idiomatic as to constitute a dialect — yet in his 
later years he spoke the most perfect English of his time. 
How strange that this should be! He know little of the 
rules of rhetoric, but he wrote with the beauty of an Addi- 
son and with the strength of a Carlyle. He left to his 
countrymen an hundred sentences worthy of a Shakespeare 
in his sublimest mood. He knew even less of the laws of 
logic, but he reasoned with the unerring directness of a 
ray of light and with the certainty of a Bacon. He was not 
deeply learned in books, but he wrote state papers, all of 
which are lofty and some of which are sublime, the most 
perfect examples of literature found in the language in 
which they are couched; and he gave utterance to the 
greatest speech ever coined by human tongue. Called from 
this narrow environment without previous wide experience 
in public affairs to administer the government of a great 
Nation in the hour of its most crucial peril, he so met the 
obligation laid upon him as to make the race his debtor 
and win immortality. 

He called about him, as his advisers, strong men, 
learned, ripe in experience and of superior parts — men who 
had been wont to formulate policies and declare issues — 
among them Seward, the most learned and accomplished 
statesman of his time; the Governor of a great State, its 
representative in the Senate of the United States; the one 



26 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

man who justly expected the nomination to the Presidency 
which had gone to Mr. Lincoln, and who took office under 
the administration only because he believed he, Seward, 
would be able to administer the government as the power 
behind the man whom the people in a moment of weakness 
had chosen to administer it instead of him. Who else? 
Salmon P. Chase, the Governor-Senator from Ohio, the 
founder of the new party in that Commonwealth, a man 
of marked capacity, unbending purpose and vaulting 
ambition. And who else? Edwin M. Stanton, the most 
imperious, unyielding character that ever .sat in a Cabinet; 
a man of iron will and a temper that brooked no opposition 
to that will. And yet this strange, unknown and inexpe- 
rienced man from the prairie made himself the master of 
these men within a year and remained their master until 
the end, and this, not because of his superior position, but 
because of the superiority of his intellect, of resource, of 
conscience and of heart. He had made himself so completely 
their master that in the end amid the gray dawn of the 
April day, when he lay still and cold in death among them 
Stanton, with tears streaming down his bearded cheeks, 
from eyes long unused to tears, turned to his bereaved 
associates, and in voice quivering with emotion, said to 
them, as if in confession: "There lies the most perfect 
ruler and master of men the world ever saw." Great trib- 
ute that! 

When occasion required Mr. Lincoln was stern and un- 
yielding as an angel of justice. He could say no and 
stand "by it at every peril to himself. And yet, his heart 
was so big with pity, his soul so wide and aflame with love 
for his fellows, that be often paused amid the rush of great 
events — events involving the life of a Nation, the fate of a 
race — and stooped to wipe the tears from the cheek of 
humble grief. The private soldier, the mother in northern 
solitude, the widow, and the orphan ever held a place in 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 27 

his great heart. He loved the people. Their sacrifices and 
sorrows made him somber and gloomy as the solitudes 
from whence he came, and jet, through it all — and here is 
the crowning glory of this great man's life — through all 
the carnage and the bloodshed, through all the heartache 
and the heart-break, through all the criticism and the ca- 
lumnies, false as sin and cruel as hate — he kept a sublime 
and flawless faith. Where others doubted he believed. 
When others ran away he stood steadfast amid the storm 
and shock of war, and would not yield! He walked the 
earth? Yes, amid its encircling gloom; but he looked 
upward through the darkness into the light where God is, 
and was not afraid. 

He did not save the Nation alone. I do not contend he 
did. There were others who toiled and struggled and 
sacrificed, but he was its savior none the less. Stirred and 
inspired ■ by what he said and did, the stooping masses 
sprung erect. They rose from the commonplace and be- 
came sublime. They climbed from the shadowy depths to 
the purple heights and for four years dwelt amid a supreme 
moral exaltation! And it was this supreme moral exalta- 
tion on the part of the multitude that saved the Nation and 
kept its flag in the sky; and Lincoln was the well and 
source of this supreme moral exaltation.- His labors made 
the broken Union whole! His death made its foundations 
one! 

You wonder why I paused to pay this tribute to the mem- 
ory of Mr. Lincoln? I did it because his life has been more 
helpful to me from my childhood to the present hour, than 
the life of any other man of whom I have known. What I 
have said is the homage gratitude pays to him for what he 
has been and is to me. I did it because in times of stress 
and grave import a free people does well to pause, turn 
back the pages of history and read again the decisions and 
the deeds and analyze anew the character of their bene- 



28 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

factors. I did it, too, for another reason — I want to make 
application of his dauntless courage, his unchanging pur- 
pose, his sublime and flawless faith. 

We are constantly being reminded by those engaged in 
the liquor traffic of the property value of that traffic; that 
millions of money are invested in it; that more than 
$2,000,000,000 worth of property is involved and in the 
name of property we are commanded to stay our march 
toward prohibition or county local option. Here it is that 
I want to make application of the courage, the unchanging 
purpose and the sublime and flawless faith of Abraham 
Lincoln. 

After four years of such war as the world till then had 
never seen; after $16,000,000,000 of money and of property 
had been expended or destroyed in its prosecution; after 
300,000 new made graves had been digged in the Southland, 
and into them had gone the mangled forms of boys and 
men we loved; after he himself had stood at Gettysburg, 
amid the silent, unknown dead, where rebellion's high and 
cruel tide had ebbed and flowed, while the soil of the bat- 
tlefield was yet wet with the blood of the gallant host who 
fell there; after all this, and with it all before his con- 
scious sight, he turned to his heart-sick countrymen and 
said : 

"Fondly do we hope — fervently do we pray — that this 
mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if 
God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the 
bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil 
shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the 
lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was 
said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The 
judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' " 

And then he called for more money and for more men and 
laid upon the altar of the Union that slavery might perish 
and freedom live. 



WIN OX A TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 29 

Hear me, men and women of Indiana, hear me ! If he 
could say that after four such years of war as he had 
looked upon; after $16,000,000,000 worth of property had 
been used or destroyed; after 300,000 of his fellow-citizens 
had given their lives in sacrifice; after he had stood at 
Gettysburg and looked upon its graves and its blood- 
stained field; if, after all this, he could say that and pur- 
sue unshaken his purpose unto the end, shall we stay our 
footsteps now because $2,000,000,000 worth of property lies 
in our pathway? Those engaged in this traffic know our 
pride in the thrift of our countrymen. They know our 
belief in the sanctity of property and in its name they seek 
to stay our hands, as slavery sought to stay the hand of 
Lincoln, forgetting that there are some things of more 
value in the country to society than property or gold. The 
peace of society, the order of society, the morals of society 
— these are the fundamentals upon which society and the 
sanctity of property rest. Take these away and there can 
be no safety for property of any kind. For upon these the 
safety of all property depends. Laws having for their pur- 
pose the preservation of the peace of society, of the public 
order, of the public morals, are the primal laws of all free 
government. And when property gets in the way of these 
fundamentals of free government; when it is being so 
used as to break the peace of society, as to disturb the 
public order, or as to corrupt the public morals of a State 
or Nation, property must get out of the way, or be de- 
stroyed in the struggle that ensues. 

I am glad our friends on the other side are beginning to 
discuss the economic phases of local option and prohibi- 
tion. I am glad that they are insisting to us that our suc- 
cess means loss of property, loss of employment to labor, 
loss of business and loss of markets for the farmer's grain. 
Why am I glad of this? First, because it is a surrender of 
all they have said on this question for ten years, and a 



30 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

confession of its fallacy. Second, because it is not true, 
except as it affects the liquor traffic or temporarily some 
trade allied with it. And when my opponent bases his 
cause upon an untruth, the falsity of which can be ascer- 
tained, I may safely welcome a discussion of the thing upon 
which he bases that cause. 

For ten years these same men have been saying: "Local 
option does not restrict and prohibition does not prohibit 
the sale of intoxicating liquors." Did you never hear that? 
With this statement of theirs still fresh in our memory we 
may be pardoned, I think, if we submit the inquiry to those 
who made it: "If local option does not restrict and prohi- 
bition does not prohibit the sale of intoxicating liquors, 
then why this frantic concern now on their part about the 
economic results of local option and prohibition?" 

If I were engaged in the manufacture of a commodity 
for the market and you were engaged in a crusade, the 
results of which were an increased sale and a widened 
market for my product, I wouldn't lie awake o' nights 
studying how to stay your hand; on the contrary, I would 
remember you nightly and with much unction in my pray- 
ers. No, local option restricts and prohibition prohibits the 
sale of intoxicating liquors. It hurts their business. That's 
why they are opposed to both local option and prohibition. 
And it's why I am in favor of both. I want the traffic pro- 
hibited wherever it can be and restricted when it can't be 
prohibited. And just here lies the issue between us. Be- 
cause local option restricts the sale of intoxicating liquors 
they want the unit of option as small as possible, and I 
want the unit as large as possible. 

But they say: "Governor, we pay heavy taxes. We own 
much property used in our business. This property is now 
on the tax duplicate of towns and cities. Local option will 
drive us out of business and take our property off of the 
tax duplicate and the loss to the public revenues conse- 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 31 

quent upon this depletion of the duplicate can be made up 
only by increasing the rate upon the property of others 
which remains upon the duplicate." 

A few months since this argument was presented to 
me in concrete form. I had gone to Marshall, Illinois, to 
make a local option address. When I alighted from the 
train a friend handed me a statement signed by the nine 
saloonkeepers of the city, which ran as follows: 

"We own $25,000 worth of taxable property now used in 
our business in stocks and fixtures and now on the tax 
duplicate. If you drive us out of business you strike this 
property from the tax duplicate. Please ask Governor 
Hanly to explain how the loss to the revenue of the city 
can be recouped unless the tax rate on the property that 
remains on the duplicate is increased." 

I said to my friend, "I don't know these nine gentlemen. 
I never saw either of them. But I know the class to which 
they belong. Go to your county treasurer and get a cer- 
tificate showing the amount of property they return for 
taxation and the amount of taxes they pay and I will an- 
swer the question." In the course of an hour or two I had 
the statement. In fact, I got it in time for the meeting. It 
disclosed the fact that the nine saloonkeepers, with a 
local brewery corporation thrown in, reported taxable 
property aggregating all told $1,300, and that they paid 
taxes in the total sum — city, county and state taxes — of 
$9.16. So it is in every community. The men engaged in 
the retail liquor traffic pay little or no part of the cost 
■of government, but they add daily to its cost through the 
crime, pauperism and dependency imposed upon the com- 
munity by their business. The business of the rumseller 
cannot be capitalized into an asset. It is always and 
everywhere a liability. 

After I had read the statement of the county treasurer 
I called for the nine saloonkeepers to come to the stage, 



32 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

and said to the people: "I want the whole nine up here 
where you can get a good look at them. I am willing to be 
generous for I bear them no malice. They may bring with 
them the local brewery. They may bring the $1,300 worth 
of property they returned for taxation and the $9.16 of 
taxes they pay. Now we have inventoried their every 
asset and have noted every contribution they make to the 
welfare of this community. And now on this side I want 
to assemble the manhood of Marshall, the womanhood of 
Marshall, the childhood of Marshall. Aye, the childhood 
of Marshall! Who can value "it? Who can measure its 
possibilities? Its achievements? Its hopes fulfilled? Its 
dreams realized? Its aspirations attained? And who 
among you will barter them for the $9.16 of taxes these 
nine saloonkeepers pay? Who will do it? If there be one 
such among you, let him speak up." 

But my saloon friends said: "Governor, you are not fair. 
Each of us under the law of Illinois pays an annual license 
fee of $1,000 into the city treasury, in addition to the gen- 
eral taxes we pay, and the city authorities use this rev- 
enue to build sidewalks, to improve the streets and to 
pay the interest on the debt of the city on the city water 
plant and the city lighting plant. Drive us out of business 
and how will the city recoup its loss to the revenues?" 

I answered: "Yes, I am fair. I know that technically 
you each pay an annual license fee of $1,000 into the city 
treasury, but I know also that in truth and actuality you 
do not either of you pay a dollar of this license fee. Every 
dollar of the $1,000 you pay as license money is taken in 
over your counter from the men and boys of this commun- 
ity, and in addition $7,000 more, and you give them nothing 
in return but physical wreck, mental ruin, blunted sensi- 
bilities, moral degradation, passions stirred beyond con- 
trol, heartache, dead sea fruit, and ultimate dependency 
and despair, and the money you take from them is not 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 33 

yours, for in the forum of Almighty God no man can get 
title to another's money unless he gives him something of 
value in exchange for it. Judged by that rule, the money 
of which you talk, together with $7,000 of which you say 
nothing, belongs to the boys and men of Marshall, and 
there are wives in Marshall who have gone without need- 
ed clothing, and there are children in Marshall who have 
gone to bed hungry because this money was diverted to 
your coffers — children who far years have not known the 
symapthy, the love, the care and inspiration of a father's 
interest, because you have tolled their fathers away from 
their homes and into your dens of vice and there de- 
bauched them," and then I turned to the men of Marshall 
and said to them: "Simply as an economic proposition — 
leaving out all question of morals and of right — you had 
better let these nine gentlemen go and take with them 
the $1,300 worth of property they return for taxation, and 
the $9.16 of taxes they pay, and if necessary pay the $1,000 
each of them has been paying per year into the city treas- 
ury as license money and save the other $7,000 that you 
have been paying each of them and for which none of 
them ever accounted." They thought about it a while and 
then concluded they'd do it, and on the next Tuesday they 
let them go. That was some months ago, and, strange to 
say, the municipality of Marshall still lives and the streets 
and sidewalks are still being maintained and the interest 
on the city lighting and water plants has not defaulted 
and the tax rate has not been increased. The experience 
of the city of Marshall is the experience of every town and 
township in Indiana that has banished the saloon. There 
are 42 county-seat towns that are dry and 831 townships, 
out of a total of 92 county-seat towns and 1,016 townships, 
and it is the testimony of the business men of these town- 
ships and towns who are not allied with the traffic that 
the absence of the saloon has bettered society, lessened 



34 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

crime and brought about better business conditions. Busi- 
ness is better than it was before. Men buy groceries and 
pay cash who did not buy them before. Other men buy shoes 
for children and pay cash who did not buy them before. 
Others are paying their accounts who did not pay their 
accounts before. 

Of all the men wronged by this traffic the man who' toils 
for his bread is most cruelly injured. And of all men he 
can least afford the injury. His health, his power to labor, 
his physical and mental efficiency constitute his capital. 
And these are all impaired by his patronage of this traffic. 

I cannot understand how any man who respects the sanc- 
tity of toil and the dignity of labor can vote against the en~ 
franchisement of labor on this question or refuse it a 
chance to banish this evil from the community if it desires. 

"Oh, but Governor, there is another effect of local option 
which you are overlooking," it is urged.. "We are con- 
sumers of large quantities of grain in the manufacture of 
our products. If you drive us out of business you strike 
down the market we furnish for the grain of the country, 
and ruin the farmer of America, Agriculture is the basis 
of wealth. The ruin of the American farmer means a 
financial and an industrial panic such as we have never 
seen." Again our friends are mistaken in their statement 
of facts. I might answer this argument conclusively by 
stating the fact that the brewery and distillery interests 
of the country consume in the manufacture of intoxicants 
less than two per cent, of its grain products and that the 
loss of two per cent, of the present market for grain 
would not materially affect the American farmer; but I 
pass that by to debate the merit of the statement on the 
theory on which it is presented. I believe I can demon- 
strate in fifteen minutes to any thoughtful farmer that the 
distiller or the brewer who furnishes him a market for a 
bushel of corn is not his benefactor, or the benefactor of 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 35 

any man, viewed from the economics alone. Let us see. 
An Indiana farmer brings to a distiller a bushel of corn, 
finds a market for it, and gets for it 50 cents. As he de- 
parts the distiller reminds him that he is his benefactor 
because he has furnished him a market for the bushel of 
corn and has paid him fifty cents. But the distiller does 
not state all the factors in the problem and without all 
the factors a correct solution is not to be had. The distil- 
ler takes the bushel of corn and distils from it four and 
one-half gallons of spirits. I do not know how much he 
dilutes them before he puts them on the market. Only the 
distiller and God knows that. I do not. The men who 
drink it do not. But if he does not dilute it at all he puts 
upon the market four and one-half gallons of intoxicating 
liquors, thirty-six pints. I will not trace the results of 
these thirty-six pints of alcohol. It would take too long. 
But I want to lay before you the results of a few of them. 
I will give you no imaginary stories, no speculative evi- 
dence. I will take instances from recent court records of 
Indiana and Illinois — records that may be verified and 
that could be readily duplicated in the court records of 
every State in this Union where the traffic is not inhibited. 

Two years ago, one Sunday afternoon in the city of Chi- 
cago, a young man of good character, a teamster, the sup- 
port of a widowed mother, crossed the street from his 
mother's home and went into a saloon, open in defiance of 
the laws of the State of Illinois. There he found music 
and song and jest and laughter and much drinking. He 
joined in the revelry and after awhile he was insanely 
drunk, his money gone. Then he was turned into the 
street and the door closed against him. He made his 
way across the street to his mother's home. There he 
importuned her for more money. Seeing his condition, she 
refused him. Seizing from the sideboard a revolver he 
ran out into the street with the expressed intention of 



36 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

returning to the saloon and having more drink, money or 
no money. His little mother followed him into the 
street. Ah, how often the little mother follows her boy 
into the street. He may be weak and wicked, but she 
cannot let him go. She follows him into the street, even 
to the prison door and to the gallows. She never deserts 
him. Unselfish, constant and abiding a mother's love is 
the purest passion known to the human heart. 

She followed him into the street, put her hand on him 
in kindly restraint and entreaty. He struck it from him 
in mad frenzy. Then his sister came and added her 
entreaties in vain, and then a neighbor whom he knew 
and respected, came, and sought in gentleness and friendly 
kindliness to restrain him, but in an insanity of drunken 
rage the boy raised the revolver and shot his friend dead 
upon the street. He was arrested. He was charged with 
murder. There was a trial. He was found guilty by a 
jury; and when the little mother, a frail little body, heard 
the verdict she threw up her hands and fell in a swoon. In 
three days she was dead. Dead of shock and of a broken 
heart. 

A year or so ago in the city of Freeport, Illinois, a young 
man of one of the best and most respected families in the 
city, but of dissolute habits, became involved in a quarrel 
with a lewd woman of the town. Drunk to frenzy, he came 
to his father's house, armed himself with a deadly weapon 
and went forth into the city in search of the woman with 
whom he had quarreled. The first person he met was 
one of the most refined and cultured women in Freeport. 
She was on the public square. She carried her babe in 
her arms. Think a minute! Motherhood and babyhood! 
Upon the street of a free city, in the daylight, where they 
had a right to be. But the young man, mistaking her in 
his drunken rage for the woman he sought, shot her dead 
at sight. Shot her dead with her babe in her arms. He, 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 37 

too, was charged with murder. He was found guilty, and 
Judge Ferrand, before whom he was tried, in sentencing 
him to prison said: "You are the seventh man in this com- 
munity, in two years, whom I have been called upon to 
sentence for murder committed while intoxicated." 

Last spring, in the city of Anderson, in our own State, 
occurred a tragedy which you, yourselves, remember. A 
young man by the name of Blake came home intoxicated. 
He knew his mother kept a small sum of money on her 
person. He demanded it of her. She refused to give 
it to him. He seized her. A struggle ensued. In the 
midst of it he snatched from the wood-box a hatchet and 
killed her with it. Killed her and robbed her. Think a 
minute! He killed and robbed his mother — her who had 
given him birth — her who had gone down into the valley 
of the shadow of death to give him life — her who had nour- 
ished him at her bosom, who had looked down into his blue 
and laughing eyes a thousand times with gratitude to God 
for so precious a gift — he killed and robbed her! The of- 
ficers of the law pursued him, caught him, and brought 
him back. He was indicted for murder, tried, and found 
guilty. And only a few weeks ago Judge McClure sen- 
tenced him to life imprisonment. 

In these three cases I have followed the results of only 
a few of the thirty-six pints of the distiller's product of 
the farmer's bushel of corn, but we have seen these few 
strike down seven lives — the three boys who committed 
the murders — the three people who were murdered — the 
little mother who died of a broken heart! And now, in the 
light of these three incidents, the result of only a few of 
the thirty-six pints of alcohol made from your bushel of 
corn, my farmer friend, I want to know if the sale of your 
bushel of corn to the distiller was a good commercial 
transaction for you? You found a market for a bushel of 
corn; yes. You sold it; yes. You got fifty cents; yes. 



38 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

But a small fraction of the product from it struck down 
seven lives, all of whom would have been consumers of all 
the products of your farm for the terms of their life ex- 
pectancies. Viewed from the standpoint of economics* — 
from the standpoint of loss of markets and of consumers 
of your products, what do you think of the value to you of 
the sale of your bushel of corn to* the distiller? Don't you 
think you had better have lost the market for that bushel 
of corn and saved the seven consumers of all the products 
of your farm which a small fraction of the alcohol he dis- 
tilled from it struck down? But there is still another fac- 
tor with which you must reckon before you decide against 
me. It costs $160 a year to keep young Blake in prison. If 
he lives thirty years it will cost $4,800 for his maintenance. 
Who pays that? The farmer who sold the distiller the 
bushel of corn for which he got fifty cents. Verily, Mr. 
Farmer, the distiller and brewer are your benefactors! 

Driven from the field of economics in flight and discom- 
fiture these men tell us that local option invades the per- 
sonal liberty of the citizen and for that reason we should 
abandon our fight for it. They command a halt in the 
sacred name of liberty. Personal liberty! I want a word 
on that. Personal liberty is not personal license. License 
at its best is not true liberty. It is but the liberty of the 
jungle — the liberty of the anarchist — the liberty of the as- 
sassin — the liberty of the land where might makes right; 
where he takes and holds who can; where no government 
is, nor ever can be, save the government of the despot, of 
the absolutist. In this land that sort/of liberty cannot be. 
Our fathers did not die to establish license. They died to 
establish liberty regulated by law. They knew if freedom 
was to endure they must regulate and protect it by law. 
They knew if I was not restrained, you could not be free, 
and if you were not restrained your neighbor could not be 
free. They knew that the rights of the few would of ne- 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 39 

cessity often have to be subordinated to the rights of 
many. Knowing this they did not leave freedom to chance 
or accident, nor liberty to the whims and caprice of men. 
They put about it the limitations and the thou shalt nots 
of the law that it might endure and not perish. 

Let me illustrate what I mean. If you were the only per- 
son living in the city of Indianapolis you could do as you 
pleased in that city. You could make a racetrack of Wash- 
ington street — its most important thoroughfare — and drive 
your team upon it at mad rate of speed at any hour of the 
day, up and down. And if you were the only citizen living 
in Indianapolis you could operate a soap factory on the 
public square, situate in the heart of that city. And if 
you were the only citizen living in Indianapolis you could 
build and operate a slaughter house in the heat of sum- 
mer on your front yard wherever your front yard might be 
located in that city. Being the only person in the city you 
would offend no one. It would be nobody's business. 

But now you can not make a racetrack of Washington 
street in Indianapolis. You cannot operate a soap factory 
on the public square and you cannot build and conduct a 
slaughter house on your front yard anyhere in that city. 
You say you will — it's your team; Washington street is a 
public place and you will drive your team there as rapidly 
as you please; that an inhibition against your doing so 
interferes with your personal liberty and that your per- 
sonal liberty is a sacred thing and must not be inhibited. 
Do you think so? Let us see about that. There are 235,000 
other persons living in Indianapolis now, who have equal 
right with you to be upon and use Washington street — 
men, women and children — and for their protection and in 
defense of their right to use Washington street the law, in 
behalf of the many, steps in and says to you: "You may 
use Washington street, it's a public thoroughfare and you 
have a right to use it, and to drive your team upon it, but 



40 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

you cannot drive your team there at mad rate of speed. 
To do so would imperil the limbs and lives of all other 
persons — men, women and children — of the city. You may 
use the street, you may drive upon it, but you must use it 
and drive your team there in such a way and at such slow 
rate of speed that you will not harm these other people. 
Their right to use the street as individuals is as sacred as 
yours, and their combined right to use it is superior to 
your right to drive your team there at high rate of speed. 
Indeed, their aggregate right to use it is so great and so 
sacred that your right to make a racetrack of it ceases to 
exist altogether and is no more." You say that interferes 
with your personal liberty. Not so. You have not thought 
carefully nor deeply upon the matter or you would not say 
that. Instead of interfering with your personal liberty to 
use Washington street it protects and insures your right to 
use it. The inhibition against your using it as a racetrack 
applies to all other persons and precludes them from mak- 
ing a racetrack of it and makes your use of it free from 
peril to your life and limb. So you see what you in your 
pride and thoughtlessness believed to be an impairment 
of your personal liberty is in fact a guarantee of your per- 
sonal liberty. 

And you! You can not operate a soap factory on the 
public square in Indianapolis now. You ask why you can 
not, and the answer comes. "There are 235,000 other per- 
sons now living in Indianapolis and such a use of the pub- 
lic square will impair their health and affect their enjoy- 
ment and comfort and you cannot make such a use of 
public property as will do that. And this inhibition does 
not impair your liberty, it protects and establishes it. 

And you! You cannot build or operate a slaughter 
house on your own front yard anywhere in Indianapolis 
now. You say: "I will. It's my front yard. I own it. I 
toiled and struggled to pay for it. The title to it is in my 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 41 

name. It's mine. I pay the taxes upon it. I'll use it as I 
please." Not so. Not so. It's your front yard? Yes, but 
there are now 235,000 other persons living in Indianapolis 
and the erection and operation of a slaughter house on 
your front yard would injuriously affect their health and 
happiness and the use and enjoyment of their front yards 
and homes and you may not use your own in a way to 
injure them. You resent that? You call it interfering 
with your personal liberty? Not so, not so. On the con- 
trary, it establishes and makes sure your liberty to enjoy 
your own front yard in peace and happiness, for it assures 
you that no one of all the 235,000 other people who now 
live in Indianapolis may use their front yards for such a 
purpose, or for any other purpose that will interfere with 
the enjoyment of yours. In the restraint of the individ- 
ual lies the liberty of 'the masses and, indeed, his own lib- 
erty. Society as a whole has rights which the individual 
can not violate nor impair even in the name of personal 
liberty without peril to his own and the rights of society, 
which thoughtless men are wont to inveigh against as an 
invasion of their personal liberty, do in fact invade but 
their personal license, subordinating their uncontrolled 
and selfish will to the welfare of society as a whole, to the 
good of the public. 

Let me submit yet another illustration — an old and 
homely one, but one so simple that even a wayfaring man 
may understand. 

I have the right to clinch my fist and to extend my arm 
and to contract it at will. It's my fist. It's my arm. I'll 
clinch the one and extend the other at my will, as often 
and as forcibly as I please. It don't harm you. It's none 
of your business. Under some circumstances that's true. 
Under others it is not. Standing here now I may. But 
if this stage were so filled with other men — men who had 
equal right with me to occupy it — that I could not clinch 



42 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

my fist and extend my arm without bringing my clinched 
fist in contact with my friend's nose, I would have no right 
to clinch my fist and extend my arm. My right to extend 
my arm ceases just before my fist reaches his nose. My 
friend has a right to sit here with an unbruised nose, and 
his right to an unbruised nose is superior to my right to 
clinch my fist and extend my arm. Therefore, when the 
extension of my arm bruises his nose I must not extend 
my arm. And that inhibition upon my right to extend 
my arm does not impair nor invade my personal liberty. 
On the contrary, it saves my own nose from being bruised. 
For the fact that I may not extend my arm and bruise his 
nose is an assurance to me that neither he nor any other 
of the many men who sit here may extend his arm and 
bruise my nose. What seemed at first to be an invasion 
of my liberty is in fact a guarantee of my liberty. 

From this I deduct what seems to me a fundamental 
truth essential to all free government: That the propriety 
of an act of the individual citizen so long as it affects no 
one but himself may be left to him; but the propriety of 
an act of the individual citizen which affects others than 
himself cannot be safely left to him. The propriety of 
such an act must be left to those affected. If it affects 
society as a whole, it must be left to society to decide 
whether it shall be permitted. The interest of the many 
cannot be safely left to the conscience of the individual. 
To do so would be the establishment of one-man power — 
the essence of absolutism. In a free government the 
propriety of every such act must needs be referred to so- 
ciety as a whole for the decision of the majority. That is 
liberty controlled by law. That's the liberty our fathers 
founded. That's the liberty for which I stand. 

And now let us make application of that principle to the 
issue before us. The liquor traffic is inimical to the public 
welfare. It is a menace to the public peace, a drain upon 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 43 

every vital current of the life of this Commonwealth. It 
is always a liability to society and never an asset. It in- 
juriously affects all men, all women, all children wherever 
it is carried on. It incites to cirme, it begets pauperism 
and dependency and imposes a thousand ills upon society. 
If this be true, then society, acting through those who hold 
the franchise to speak for it, has the moral right to decide 
whether it shall continue. In addition to this moral right, 
which I believe is inherent, I want society to have the 
legal right to decide. That is local option. That is Ameri- 
can. That is fundamentally right. And the man who dis- 
putes and opposes it strikes at the very vitals of free gov- 
ernment. 

Believing this, I am asking for a law enfranchising so- 
ciety that it may decide — a law that will give the qualified 
voters of the several counties of the State of Indiana the 
right to vote upon the propriety of the continuance of the 
traffic among them. I seek the enfranchisement of the 
people — your enfranchisement. I want to put into your 
hands a weapon with which you can protect yourself, your 
home, your wife, your child. 

Upon this issue and in this behalf I appeal to you, be- 
lieving that you, the survivors and the children of the men 
who have saved the life of the Nation, maintained the soli- 
darity of the Union and kept its flag in the sky, will not 
turn away or fail me at such a time. The issue is before 
you. It is yours. It is for you to decide. 

Personally I have seen so much of the evils of the traffic 
in the last four years, so much of its economic waste, so 
much of its physical ruin, so much of its mental blight, so 
much of its tears and heartache, that I have decided. I 
have enlisted against it for the war, be it long or short 
in duration. I shall not turn from the conflict until you 
are enfranchised and given power to control it. I may be 
broken. I may fall. But if broken, I shall be broken on 



44 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

the field. If I fall, I shall fall with my face toward the 
foe — fall with an appeal upon my lips, not for succor or 
for quarter, but for justice for the manhood and woman- 
hood of Indiana, for a fair chance and a square deal for 
her helpless childhood. 

I bear no malice toward those engaged in the business, 
but I hate the traffic. 

I hate its every phase. 

I hate it for its intolerance. 

I hate it for its arrogance. 

I hate it for its hypocrisy; for its cant and craft and 
false pretense. 

I hate it for its commercialism ; for its greed and ' ava- 
rice; for its sordid love of gain at any price. 

I hate it for its domination in politics; for its incessant 
effort to debauch the suffrage of the country; for the cow- 
ards it makes of public men. 

I hate it for its utter disregard of law; for its ruthless 
trampling under foot of the solemn compacts of State con- 
stitutions. 

I hate it for the load it straps to labor's bacK; for the 
palsied hands it gives to toil; for its wounds to genius; for 
the tragedies of its might-have-beens. 

I hate it for the human wrecks it has caused. 

I hate it for the almshouses it peoples; for the prisons it 
fills; for the insanity it brings; for its countless graves in 
potter's fields. 

I hate it for the mental ruin it imposes upon its victims; 
for its spiritual blight; for its moral degradation. 

I hate it for the crimes it commits; for the homes it de- 
stroys; for the hearts it breaks. 

I hate it for the malice it plants in the hearts of men; 
for its poison, for its bitterness; for the dead sea fruit with 
which it starves their souls. 

I hate it for the grief it causes womanhood — the scald- 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 45 

ing tears, the hopes deferred, the strangled aspirations, its 
burden of want and care. 

I hate it for its heartless cruelty to the aged, the help- 
less and the infirm; for the shadow it throws across the 
lives of children; for its monstrous injustice to blameless 
little ones. 

I hate it as virtue hates vice, as righteousness hates sin, 
as truth hates error, as justice hates wrong, as liberty 
hates tyranny, as freedom hates oppression. 

I hate it as Abraham Lincoln hated slavery. And as he 
sometimes saw in prophetic vision the end of slavery, and 
the coming of the time when the sun should shine, the 
wind should blow and the rain should fall upon no slave 
in all the Republic, so I sometimes seem to see the end of 
this unholy traffic; the coming of a time when, if it does 
not wholly cease to be, it shall find no safe habitation any- 
where beneath Old Glory's stainless stars. 



THE SAFE SIDE OF LIFE FOR 
YOUNG MEN 



By Hon. H. W. Bain, Lexington, Ky. 

Moderate drinking leads to drunkenness; total absti- 
nence leads away from it. Then total abstinence is the 
safer. Drunkards are made of moderate drinkers; drunk- 
ards are never made of total abstain- 
ers. Then total abstinence is the 
safer. The Bible definition of tem- 
perance is, moderation in regard to 
things useful and right; total absti- 
nence regarding things hurtful and 
wrong. Is alcohloic liquors wrong as 
a beverage? It is bad in the begin- 
ning, bad in the middle, bad in the 
end, bad inside, outside, upside, down- 
side; the enemy of blood, bone, mus- 
cle and moral character. Boys, never 
take a drink of intoxicating liquor, and when you are as 
old as I, you will not regret it. Some young men may say, 
"I will not go so far in its use that I cannot control 
myself." I admit you do not intend to. Do you suppose 
Edgar Allen Poe ever dreamed, when he took his first 
social glass with that old Virginia gentleman, that his last 
words would be: "Take thy beak from out my heart, take 
thy form from off my door, quoth the raven, nevermore"? 
Do you suppose Thomas F. Marshall, our gifted Kentucky 
orator, ever dreampt when he stood at the foot of the ladder 
of fame and all Kentucky pointed him to the golden glory 

47 




48 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

of its summit, that his last words would be: "And this is 
the end. Tom Marshall's dying, dying under a borrowed 
sheet, in a borrowed bed, in a house furnished by charity, and 
without a decent suit of clothes in which to be buried." I 
remember well the first time I ever saw that great orator. 
My father took me to Lexington, nine miles, to see and 
hear him. For two hours he swayed a great audience like 
the storm sways the mountain pine, for he could soar as 
high on unseen wings of eloquence as any offspring that 
ever plumed wings from a family of orators. That was the 
first time, and I remember, too, the last time. He was 
standing on a street corner in Lexington, leaning against 
a lamp-post, his eagle eye was dimmed by debauch, a thin, 
worn coat was buttoned across soiled linen, and dishev- 
eled hair hung over his brow. As he straightened up, 
steadied himself and started for the saloon, touching 
traces of ancient grandeur lingered around his brow like 
the twilight on a storm cloud. Not long after he sat in a 
saloon at midnight telling political stories for drinks. 
When going off into a stupor some one said: "G-ive us an- 
other, Mr. Marshall." He was always eloquent, drunk or 
sober. Rising he turned upon the motley crew about him 
and said: "Ah, you remind me of a set of bantam chickens, 
picking the sore head of an eagle when his wings are brok- 
en." Some of you may be saying in your minds, "Such a 
man does not try to quit." One morning, after days and 
nights of debauch, Mr. Marshall was standing at the door 
of a blacksmith shop as the iron fresh from the forge was 
laid on the anvil white with heat. Mr. Marshall said to a 
friend: "I would seize that rod of redhot iron, hold it in 
my hand till it cools if it could only cure me of my appe- 
tite for strong drink." When he had taken the pledge and 
kept it some months he was called upon in a temperance 
meeting in Washington City for a speech. He arose and 
referring to the. pledge he had taken, said: "Not for the 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 49 

brightest wreath, that ever encircled a statesman's brow; 
not for all the wealth a world could bestow would I cast 
from me this pledge of a liberated mind, this talisman 
against temptation, and plunge again into the horrors that 
once beset my path. So help me heaven, I would spurn 
beneath my feet all the gifts a universe could offer and 
live and die as I am, poor, but sober." He wanted to quit, 
but an appetite that had come boiling and hissing down 
in the veins of his family for generations was too much for 
his weakened will. 

Before we had secured the secret ballot in Kentucky, in 
a local option contest, the question, "Are you in favor of 
the sale of intoxicating liquor in this district?" was pro- 
pounded to every voter. In a contest in Covington, Ky., a 
man faced the clerk, and when the question was pro- 
pounded, the voter drew a whisky flask from his pocket, 
and sitting on the window sill between himself and the 
clerk, he said: "Ah, you've hit me many a hard lick; 
you've taken away my last friend, broken my mother's 
heart and now sending me to the grave. I never had a 
chance to hit you before, but I will once. I vote 'No.' " And 
the poor fellow hurled the bottle into the street and 
walked away. Yet when we would remove the saloon 
from such men we are charged with robbing men of their 
liberties. Some men have about as correct definition of 
the word liberty as a good German had of the word self- 
defense. When taken before the court for shooting a dog, 
the judge said: "Did you shoot him in self-defense?" 
"Shoot vot?" said the German. "Did you shoot the dog in 
self-defense?" "Naw! I did not; I shoot him in de face 
and he schumped over de fence." That is the free man 
who lifts himself above. the vices that ruin the soul. 

It is said: "This is a free country; if a man wants a 
drink, and be a brute, let him be a brute." Brutes don't 
drink whisky. Who have been the drunkards of this coun- 



50 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

try? Who was shot in Louisville, Kentucky, about twenty- 
five years ago while intoxicated? Young Henry Clay, the 
most gifted grandson of Henry Clay, the great commoner. 
While Harry Clay was dying, only a few blocks from him, 
in jail, to be tried for murder committed while drunk, was 
the grandson of one of the greatest men that ever honored 
Kentucky in the Senate of the United States; at the same 
hour, in the same city a great-grandson of Patrick Henry, in 
the station house drunk. S. S. Prentiss, whom Daniel Web- 
ster left his seat in the Senate that he might hear the great 
orator, sleeps in an unmarked drunkard's grave. George 
D. Prentiss, the great poet-editor, went down through 
drink. Scotland never produced but one Robert Burns, 
and yet this child of poetry and song penned his last 
words to a friend, begging a loan to save him from the 
drunken debtor's prison. But, thank God, while intemper- 
ance drags down the gifted and noble, temperance builds 
up the humblest and lowest. Bring me the poorest boy 
in this community; bring one 10 years of age; let him 
place his hand upon his heart and pledge me he will never 
take a drink of intoxicating liquor. Let him go out of this 
auditorium, keep that pledge, be industrious and honest, 
and in twenty years from now he will ride the roads of 
his county honored, respected and loved. We live in a 
land where rank belongs to the boy who earns it, whether 
he hails from the frescoed walls of a palace or "the old 
log cabin in the lane"; a land where a boy can go from a 
tow-path, a tanyard, or a rail-cut to the presidency of the 
United States; a land where I can look the humblest boy 
in the face and say: 

"Never ye mind the crowd, my boy, 
Or think that life won't tell; 
The work is the work for aye that, 
To him that doeth it well. 
Fancy the world a hill, my boy, 
Look where the millions stop : 
You'll find the crowd at the base, my boy, 
There's always room at the top." 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 51 

I place industry with sobriety. Don't be lazy. I saw a 
man once who looked so lazy it rested me to look at him. 
A boy working for a farmer was asked by his employer if 
he had ever seen a snail. He replied: "Yes, sir; I think I 
•saw one." "You must have met him, for your surely never 
overtook him," replied the farmer. 

Never was there a day when a young man equipped with 
education, energy, ambition and good habits was in such 
demand as now, and never a day when a young man with 
bad habits in so little demand. If a young man applies 
for a position to railroad company or merchant, the ques- 
tion is asked: "What are your habits? Do you drink? 
How do you spend your evenings?" Even a liquor seller 
advertised for a young man to tend bar who abstained 
from the use of liquor. How would this read: "Wanted — A 
young man to sell shoes who goes barefooted?" Young 
woman, if the railroad company does not want him, the 
merchant rejects him, and even the saloonkeeper does not 
want him, will you take him for better or worse, wrap up 
your hopes of happiness in him, and to him swear away 
your young life and love? Some young lady may say: "If 
I refuse him I may be an old maid." Then be an old maid. 
Paint up and love yourself. John B. Gough said: "You had 
better be laughed at for not being married than never to 
laugh any more because you are married." But back to 
my line of thought. Young men, you live in a testing 
world. A world in which every bud on every tree and bush 
is tested. The bud that can survive the wind and frost 
goes on to flower and fruitage. The bud that can't stand 
the test goes with the wind to be trampled in the dust. 
Every cannon made by the United States government is 
tested. The cannon that can stand the test goes into bat- 
tleship or land fort. The cannon that can't stand the test 
goes into the scrap-iron pile. Yonder is a young man who 
was born in the purple, nursed in the lap of luxury, but in 



52 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

college his character could not stand the test. He ex- 
changed his books for cards and wine. He was tried for 
murder some months ago and the insane asylum saved him 
from the electric chair. He may be released, but he will 
never be a free man. Conscience will goad him up and 
down the corridors of memory while life lasts. Yonder, a 
babe was born in a cabin. When 11 years of age he helped 
his mother tend a garden, and later on through adversity 
he made his way to the door of a college. He had but a 
few cents when he reached the village where the college 
was located. He arrived on a Saturday, went to church 
Sunday and put all of his mite in the contribution box to 
Christianize the world. The next Saturday he earned 75 
cents with a jack-plane. He worked his way through and 
graduated with honor. At 28 he was in the senate of his 
State; at 36 in Congress, and twenty-seven years from the 
time James A. Garfield rang the bell of Hiram College for 
his board he entered the White House as President of the 
United States. Columbus was a weaver, Arkwright a bar- 
ber, Esop a slave, Bloonrfield a shoemaker, Homer a beg- 
gar, while Franklin, whose name will not die while light- 
ning rips open the dark wardrobe of the firmament, went 
from the humble condition of a journeyman printer. With 
all earnestness I plead that you write the principles of 
total abstinence on your hearts as in letters of fire, and 
pray God to keep you far away from the tempter's path 
forever. 

Some say: "This is a free country; if a man wants to 
drink let him do it and take the consequences." The trou- 
ble about that is a man drinks and some one else takes the 
consequences. A husband drinks and his wife takes the 
consequences. A boy drinks and his mother takes the 
consequences. But a few weeks ago a young man in Indi- 
ana took to drink and when his money was spent, and his 
appetite craved more, he went home and, knowing his 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 53 

mother carried her money in a purse around her neck, he 

stealthily stole upon her as she bent over a cook stove and 

drove a hammer into her head. Cutting the string he took 

the money and continued his spree. 

"Still the tribute money cometh 
To the Nation and the State. 
And precious souls are bartered 
That the treasure may be great. 
And women's hearts are breaking, 
As they weep and work and wait 
And conscience sleeps on." 

No, thank God, conscience is wakening. When I began 
this work in Kentucky the heavens were black with the 
smoke of distilleries and saloons were in even cross-roads 
villages. Time and again my life was threatened. Today 
one hundred and nineteen counties in Kentucky and nine- 
ty-seven of them without a saloon. Georgia, North Caro- 
lina, Alabama, state-wide prohibition; Tennessee with 
only four cities wet, while Oklahoma comes into the Union 
born sober. You good people of the North better wake up, 
or else in return for having broken the shackles of slavery 
from the blacks of the South, the South will free herself 
on this question and, going North, help to free Northern 
whites from the curse of saloon slavery. 

This transformation in the South is creating consterna- 
tion in the ranks of the "Prince of Darkness." Enormous 
sums of money are being raised to stay the tide. Model 
license leagues are being formed and an effort is being 
made to "reform" the saloon by making "model saloons." 
This reminds me of the young woman who married. The 
next day a friend congratulated her upon having a <: model" 
husband. She was greatly elated until she looked into the 
dictionary and found the definition of model to be "A 
small specimen of the real thing." 

It is proposed to have, through a high-license law, a 
more respectable saloon isystem, and thereby a lessening 
of the evils that have made the average saloon disreputa- 
ble. The sin is not in the character of the saloon or the 



54 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

man who serves the liquor, but in what he sells. If you 
have the drink you will have the drunkenness; if you have 
the cause you will have the effect. Positive drink, com- 
parative drinking, superlative drunkenness. You may try 
high tax or low tax, but all the time you will have sin-tax, 
and more sin than tax. Put a pig in a parlor, keep him 
there till grown, feed him the best of food and when grown 
you will have a hog. You do not change the nature of the 
pig, you may change the condition of the parlor. 

Any question that has a great moral principle in it is 
never settled until you settle it right. And I believe if 
every man and woman in this country whose names are 
on the church records would step out into line resolved to 
ignore all questions of compromise and not to cease war- 
fare upon the manufacture, sale and use of intoxicating 
liquor as a beverage, God would stretch out His arm and 
save this Republic from the greatest curse that threatens 
its life. Some one may say, "What can I do?" Little 
things are great things when done in God's name. 

Shamgar, what's that in thy hand? 

Only an ox-goad. 

Come dedicate it to God and go slap the Philistines. 

David, what's that in thy hand? 

Only a sling and a pebble from the brook. 

Come dedicate them to God and go kill that giant. 

My little lad, what's that in thy hand? 

Only five loaves and two little fishes. 

Come dedicate them to God, they'll feed thousands and 
basketsful will be left. 

My brother, what's that in thy hand? 

Only a little ballot. 

Come dedicate it to God and home and native land; go 
cast it against the American saloon and may God bless 
you and the influence of your ballot for the overthrow of 
the gigantic crime of crimes, the legalized liquor business. 



FAIR PLAY 



By Hon. James A. Tate, Harriman, Term. 
A prohibitionist? The most popular opinion of a pro- 
hibitionist is something like this. He is a good fellow, 
first-class in the Sunday school or the church or the 
prayer meeting. We can not get 
along without him in such capacity, 
but when it comes to managing the 
municipal affairs of the city, or the 
politics of the county, state, or nation, 
it will not do to risk him. He is then 
a cranky, crazy, fanatical kind of per- 
son. First-class for the church, but 
unfit for the country. This, I say, is 
the popular opinion of a prohibitionist. 
I make this statement and I hope to 
establish its truth during the time I 
am permitted to speak. A prohibitionist is not a crank, is 
not a fool, is not a fanatic. He is a statesman and the 
vOnly statesman on the liquor problem. Any man that oc- 
cupies any other position than that of the prohibitionist is 
not a statesman. 

To the proof: I am a prohibitionist in the interest of 
fair play — treat everybody alike. What do I mean by this? 
When this meeting is adjourned if two of you big fellows 
should come up here and jump on me and begin to kick 
me with your feet and cuff me with your fists, that per- 
formance would not go on two minutes until another big 
fellow would take one of you by the collar and say: "Come 

55 




56 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

off; it is not fair for two men to beat up one man." When 
he takes one of you off — I weigh 200 pounds — I will look 
after the other fellow. If boys see a big dog fighting a 
little one they will knock the big dog off; it is not fair. If, 
however, they see two curs equally yoked they will watch 
it with admiration until one dog hollows then the other 
must quit. 

A whipped dog can not be chewed up in this country 
when boys are about. The spirit of fair play is in the 
minds and hearts of the American people. No pets, no 
specialties; one man no better than another; equal rights 
to all, special privileges to none; such is the American 
doctrine. In the interest of this spirit I am a prohibition- 
ist. You will see what I mean by this before I get through. 

We are a growing, progressive people; onward and up- 
ward is the progress of the race. The world is better to- 
day than it was yesterday, a month ago, or a thousand 
years ago. The books tell us that we once lived in caves, 
ate raw meat and for the purpose had long, sharp teeth. I 
am sure if that was our conditions once it is not our con- 
ditions now. As an evidence of our growth into better 
things you have only to think of the marked improvement 
in morals, in industry, and in every department of human 
activity, in your own neighborhood during the time of your 
own memory. Every decade brings us nearer the final 
victory for truth and right. You will see what I mean by 
this before I am through speaking. 

I speak today in the interest of law — law that has to do 
with civil government. We are a law-making people. 
From the time civilization began down to the present the 
people have had some form of government represented by 
law. 

A moment's thought will convince us that everything 
with which man has had to do had to have a beginning. 
The first chair had to be manufactured, the first audi- 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 57 

torium had to be built, the first pair of shoes had to be 
made, the first law had to be enacted. 

What was the first law that man ever made? The books 
do not tell us; in fact, the first law was made before we 
ever had books, school houses or churches. Since none of 
us know what it was, I will venture to suggest what I 
think it was. Ages ago in our crude, uncultured, uncivil- 
ized state I can see a community with no law, no order, 
no government. In this community I can see a man about 
six and one-half feet tall, with bushy head, prominent 
cheek bones and chin protruding. He passes along through 
the crowd and observes a fellow he does not like, he 
knocks him down for the privilege of seeing him kick. A 
little further on he strikes another fellow, then kills 
another. He is a desperado, bully, daredevil. He has just 
gone by and I can hear two other fellows talking. One 
says: "Did you see that man kill that one?" "Yes, I did; 
and I do not think he ought to do it." "That thing ought 
to 1 be stopped, but I can't stop it; he can whip me." "Well, 
it ought to be stopped because I might get hit next. Here 
is an idea. Let all the balance of us get together and 
make it a rule, a law, in this country, that any man who 
kills another without a cause, that the balance of us will 
get together and we will string him up. Won't that stop 
it?" "Well, it will help to do it." In the opinion of this 
speaker down went the first great law. "Thou shalt not 
murder." 

What made the people make that law? Did they want 
to get the murderer to Heaven? No, sir; they did not care 
whether he went to Heaven or somewhere else. They 
enacted that law in their crude way to protect society 
against the man that injures and hurts it. In fact, the pro- 
tection of society against its enemies is the foundation 
of all human law. With this understanding I am going to 
climb the wall of this auditorium (in my imagination) 



58 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

from the floor to the ceiling. At the bottom next the floor 
is the murderer; we have said to him: "Thou shalt not. 
You injure society." Yonder at the top, next the ceiling, 
we see another man; his mustache waxed and twisted, 
genial, pleasant, hail-fellow well met — the saloonkeeper. 
He injures society; brings pain, sorrow and heartache in 
his pathway. We say to him: "Thou shalt injure society. 
You pay for the privilege through a license fee." This is 
not fair. Treat men alike in a free country. That is my 
doctrine! 

After we condemned the murderer probably a thousand 
years went by before we made another great advance in 
moral legislation. The people were busy, however. Con- 
ditions now are gradually improving. The people are 
building cabins instead of living in caves; clearing the 
land, planting in the soil, and in many ways making life 
more pleasant and profitable. During it all there was a 
big, lazy fellow in the neighborhood, not imbued with the 
spirit of industry, who refused to make a living by work. 
He would prowl around at night and watch for an oppor- 
tunity, when honest people were asleep, to carry away the 
products of honest toil by others. When the farmer missed 
his produce he thought little about it at first. When the 
practice became common in the neighborhood the citizens 
began to wake up to the situation and, in groups, would 
give expressions to the thought embodied in the state- 
ment: "If a man will not work, neither shall he eat." So 
to protect the public welfare down went the next great 
law. "Thou shalt not steal." The purpose of the law! 
Not so much to improve the character of the lawbreaker, 
but to protect society against his disreputable business. 

The saloonkeeper is still at the top, corrupting the 
morals of the people and is given the privilege by law, be- 
cause he divides the profits with the public by means of 
revenue. 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 59 

It is not fair. Treat men alike in a free country. It 
is evident that law making has been a development of 
the ages. It could not all be done in a day. It is a great 
comfort to me to believe that the people have always done 
the best they knew. The prohibition problem is undoubt- 
edly a question of character and intelligence. 

Watch the world development. 

After we condemned the thief a period of time went by 
before another great advance was made in moral legis- 
lation, but the people were busy. They are now carrying 
en commerce in a crude way, building better homes, man- 
ufacturing clothing and many agricultural implements, 
building highways and becoming familiar with letters and 
other educational thought, but they still had the lazy fellow 
who would not work a lick. These loafers said: "If we 
steal they will string us up; so we must get a living some 
other way." So when they found a citizen coming home 
with a quarter of deer meat on his shoulder, armed with 
a club, they would step in front of him and say, "Throw 
up your hands," and up they go; the loafer takes the meat 
and makes off through the woods with it. At these first 
offenses the farmer smiled and admired the nerve of the 
intruder. The practice becoming general, the good citizens 
met and resolved that the throwing up of hands was get- 
ting to be monotonous and to improve conditions down 
went the next great law. "Robber, thou shalt not. You 
are a disturber of the public peace and debaucher of the 
public morals." The saloonkeeper is still at the top. We 
say to him: "Thou shalt debauch the public peace. You 
divide the profits with us in the form of revenue." It is 
not fair. Treat men alike in a free country. 

By this time in the history of the world the population 
has so increased that it is impossible for the people to 
meet together in mass-meetings and regulate the affairs 
of the community. So the country is divided into empires, 



60 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

republics and other forms of civil government, having such 
officers as are necessary to look after the civil and po- 
litical movements that need attention. The world con- 
tinues to improve in education, religion, industry and 
social life. In the midst of it all we still have the big, 
lazy fellows who are not inclined to honest work, or the 
making of an honest dollar. So they say: "When we 
steal they string us up; when we rob they string us up. 
Therefore, we must get it some other way." Gambling 
devices are- soon invented, and, through the young men 
and others who will take part, the "tricks of the trade" 
are soon extensively advertised over the country. In the 
beginning all considered games of chance in the nature 
of fun or sport, and meeting with popular approval the 
practice spreads far and wide. It is soon discovered to be 
a debaucher of public morals and a destroyer of private 
character. When this thought took possession of the solid 
citizenship a reform is demanded in the interest of the 
public good. So the men interested in the social progress 
and morals of the people whispered in the ears of legal 
representatives, and down went the next great law. "Gam- 
bler, thou shalt not. You are a debaucher of the public 
morals, a disturber of the public peace and your business 
shall no longer flourish with public approval." The saloon- 
keeper is still at the top. In all parts of the country we 
have not yet reached his case. We are headed, however, 
in that direction. He pays for the privilege. It is not fair. 
Let us stand for a fair play in a free country. 

It will be interesting to this audience to have us briefly 
call attention to the progress our own country has made 
for great moral reforms during the past twenty-five years. 
The people have always done the best they knew. As 
promptly as we have been educated to the truth on any 
great proposition, right legal action on the part of the 
people has always resulted. In the memory of many of us 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 61 

present the lottery existed legally in many parts of the 
country. Many reputable citizens regarded it with favor. 
When its debauching influence was manifest, state after 
state abolished it until, finally, the lottery intrenched itself 
in the great state of Louisiana and was known as the 
Louisiana State Lottery. When the people became prop- 
erly educated, the greatest contest in the history of the 
state took place in Louisiana over this proposition. The 
right triumphed. The lottery attempted to save its life by 
moving to Old Mexico, but Uncle Sam withdrew the priv- 
ilege of the mails and the entire business became a 
thing of the past. The saloon, however, continues still in 
American life because it pays for the privilege, though 
a corrupter and debaucher of the public conscience. Let 
me remind you that it is not fair. Fair play in a free 
country. 

As soon as this victory had been won, our people began 
to look about them for the next great moral battle to be 
fought out before the law. At this time prize-fighting, 
under the leadership of the great pugilists of the world, 
occupied the center of the stage in the sporting life of our 
cities and smaller towos. The press of America gave 
extended reports of the most minute details of every great 
battle. The public devoured this information with a relish 
that was amazing. It was soon discovered by the wiser 
heads and safer leaders that these bloodthirsty battles, 
often masquerading as athletic contests, were not for the 
good of the public, but most certainly had a debasing 
and demoralizing influence, not only on the spectator but 
on the general reader of the newspaper reports. In the 
interest of the public welfare the people demanded legisla- 
tion and throughout this broad country prize-fighting was 
condemned before the law. The saloon, as a tormenter 
of public morals greater than a prize-ring leader, continues 
to do a lawful business at the old stand. It pays for its 



62 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

privilege. It is not fair. Equal rights to all, special priv- 
ilege to none, ought to be the practice of a free country. 

In the discussion of the next character I want to reply 
to those people who insist that a man has a right to eat 
what he wants, to drink what he wants, to wear what he 
wants, to read what he wants, to go where he wants to, 
and to do what he wants to. In our opinion no more 
ridiculous position could be taken by any intelligent man." 
This is supposed to be a government under the control of 
law, and the right kind of law. Law to promote the public 
good and not enacted for private gain or personal selfish- 
ness. Near the ceiling, right under the saloon man, I see 
the publisher who profits by the publication of obscene 
pictures and literature. There is not a spot of ground on 
earth today over which the Stars and Stripes float where 
the bad picture man can run his business under the protec- 
tion of the law. Everywhere we have said to him: "Thou 
shalt not. You are a corrupter of the public morals, and 
your business is against the public good." As far as I 
know or can find out, this position taken by our law- 
makers, is approved by respectable and intelligent people 
throughout this country. Granted that this position is a 
correct one, for a moment I am going to stand the saloon- 
keeper side by side with the obscene publisher that you 
may observe the similarity in the fundamental principles 
governing their business. (Here Mr. Tate placed a chair 
to the left calling it a saloon, and a hat to the right, 
calling it an obscene printing establishment.) What is the 
motive that inspires the picture man to run his business? 
Money. Take the dollar out of it and the business is dead. 
A similar motive applies to the saloonkeeper. Money! 
Through what channel does the bad picture affect society? 
Passion, appetite. Through what channel does whisky 
affect society. Passion, appetite. A 14-year-old boy can 
understand this. How does the picture reach appetite? 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 63 

The physicians tell us we have five senses. Feeling, smell- 
ing, hearing, tasting, seeing. The picture goes through 
the sense of sight to appetite. Likewise liquor goes 
through the sense of taste to appetite. The indulgence in 
the picture habit produces moral ruin. The indulgence in 
the liquor habit produces the same. There is no difference 
as to the principles involved as to the character of these 
two trades. The only shadow of difference is the fact that 
one operates through the sense of sight, while the other 
through the sense of taste. It is not too much to say 
that the liquor habit is often the father to the other vice. 
To the picture man our government says: "Thou shalt 
not." To the saloon man our government says: "Thou 
shalt. You pay for the privilege." It is not fair. Treat 
men alike. Fair play in a free country — that is my doc- 
trine. (Here Mr. Tate went through a pantomime. A per- 
formance that carried very effectively to the audience his 
thought, but as no word was uttered, it is impossible to 
place the representation on paper.) We are going to say 
in the near future to the saloonkeeper at the top: "Come 
down from your high perch; go in with the rest of the men 
that hurt society, in the interest of fair play." We started 
in to establish the fact that a prohibitionist is not a crank, 
a fool, a fanatic, but a statesman, and the only states- 
man on the drink problem. We believe we have done it. 
The prohibitionist is in line with the progress and devel- 
opment of the ages, from the time civilization began down 
to the present. "And ye shall know the truth and the 
truth shall make you free." 



CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP 



By Rev. Charles B. Galloway, D. D., Jackson, Miss. 

"Render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's ; and 
unto God the things that are God's. Matt. xxii. 21. 

The words I have chosen for a text were the reply of our 
Lord to certain questions of his enemies, insidiously de- 
signed to compass his ruin. The Pharisees and Herodians, 
though jealous of each other, and ad- 
vocating priniciples that made them 
avowed and bitter enemies, formed 
an unholy alliance against Jesus, their 
common and dreaded enemy. They 
came to him with the question, "Is it 
lawful to pay tribute to Caesar?" By 
this they hoped to entangle him in 
certain destruction. The Pharisees 
were restless under the Roman yoke, 
and longed for their national inde- 
pendence. The Herodians were advo- 
cates and defenders of the Roman government, and were 
ever vigilant to detect any insubordination or insurrection. 
Now, if he refused tribute to Caesar, he would have invited 
upon his head the condemnation of the Herodians. On the 
contrary, if he acknowledged allegiance and subjection to 
Caesar, he incurred the relentless hostility of the Phari- 
saic party. So penetrating into the dark and malicious 
design of their question, he called for the tribute money. 
He asked whose is this image and superscription? They 
reply Caesar's. Then, said he, "render therefore unto Cae- 

65 




66 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

sar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things 
that are God's." This was a two-edged sword, sharp as an 
Arabian scimitar, cutting at once the Pharisees for their 
disloyalty, and the Herodians for their infidelity. With 
what telling, merciless power, like the battle-ax of Jeho- 
vah, must it have fallen upon their unsuspecting and un- 
protected heads. How must they have skulked away from 
such an unequal combat to hide their faces in shameless 
defeat. 

But the Savior's reply was more than a mere victory 
over designing foes; it was the enunciation of a grand 
principle. Here He has stated with the clearness and force 
of omniscience man's twofold obligation to his country and 
his God. He is at once a citizen and a Christian. He owes 
allegiance to the laws of his country and the laws of 
Heaven. As a citizen He is obedient to the authority and 
pays tribute to Caesar; and as a Christian He obeys the 
commands and renders grateful homage to God. 

We have set forth the Christian's attitude toward civil 
government. While the primary purpose of the Gospel is 
to redeem and make meet for eternal life, it fits men for 
every possible obligation and relation in this life. That is 
a cheap conception of the Christian religion which limits 
the sphere of its operation to what has been called "other 
worldliness" to ceaseless contemplation of and concern for 
the things that are heavenly. It takes in the whole man, 
the entire sweep of being, and is concerned for everything 
that affects his Christian character and destiny from daily 
bread to eternal life.. While the characteristics of Christ's 
kingdom are clearly revealed, and our high citizenship 
therein described, we are reminded of obligations to tem- 
poral kingdoms under whose protection we live, and by 
whose agency God works out the destiny of nations and 
the race. 

From these and other Scriptures we learn that God 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 67 

exercises a providential watch-care over civil government. 
If He demands of us obedience to the civil authority surely 
He is not indifferent to the government we are to obey and 
sustain. God's hand has ever been manifested in the civil 
and political history of the world. Upon His eternal 
throne of light He has been no unconcerned observer of 
the rise and fall of nations and dynasties. Indeed, the his- 
tory of nations is but the history of God's providence. 
He was Himself the theocratic ruler of a wonderful 
people — the author and administrator of their -laws. 
Their crimes He punished, their necessities He sup- 
plied, their faithful citizenship He rewarded, and their 
bitterest enemies He conquered. By the strong arm 
of His power Pharaoh and his host went down to a pitiless 
death in order to accomplish ' the salvation of a chosen 
nation. He sends an angel to sweep His death wing over 
an enemy's camp, and Sennacherib's magnificent army lies 
pale and still in death. Though by immediate supernatural 
agency God no longer controls the affairs of state, yet He 
is as really administering the government of the world by 
unseen and noiseless forces in the interest of human 
redemption and the world's uplifting. I do not say that all 
kingdoms and governments are of special Divine appoint- 
ment. Surely God did not inaugurate the despotic empire 
of Spain or the bloody revolutions of France, or make the 
reddened field of Marathon, Hastings and Waterloo. But 
these He has wisely and graciously overruled, to work out 
His great problem of human salvation. 

Upon our own fair land God has smiled with special 
favor. Here He seems to have planted us to work out and 
illustrate the grand doctrine of personal and civil liberty. 
From the birth hour of the nation to this midwinter morn- 
ing a good providence has blessed our history. Though 
we have passed through periods of trials and darkness — ■ 
though sometimes the strain upon our national vigor 



68 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

seemed more than we could endure — we have withstood the 
strain and stand today a very miracle of national history. 
After the shiver of the earthquake, and the roar of the 
tempest and the sweep of fire have passed, as before the 
prophet on Mount Horeb, God has spoken in the still, small 
voice of His providence words of comfort and cheer. 

Second — The duties of citizenship and Christianity are 
not in conflict. No true fealty to God can be disloyal to 
country. Nor can patriotic service to country be infidelity 
to God. Obedience to magistrates is urged by the apostle 
as a Christian duty; submission to governors is exalted 
among the truest virtues, and is insisted upon as a warn- 
ing to evil-doers and an encouragement to "them that 
do well." 

Between spiritual and civil governments there is closest 
sympathy, but they are independent. There should be a 
distinct separation of church and state. Every minister of 
Christ should be a patriot, but never a party politician. 
The mitre and the crown should never encircle the same 
brow; the crozier and the sceptre should never be wielded 
by the same hand. Though separate, there is no enmity, 
but the strongest cordiality, religious obligation is not at 
war with good citizenship — on the contrary, the best citi- 
zen is the best Christian. 

Nor need our Christianity be corrupted by patriotic 
service to country. Eminent usefulness and activity in pub- 
lic life need not compromise the most scruplously religious 
conscience. Christian statesmanship is by no means an im- 
possibility. The error which has wrought untold mischief in 
our country is couched in that old threadbare phrase, "We 
cannot contaminate ourselves with politics." This sentiment 
is essentially pernicious and destructive of the sacred privi- 
leges and institutions of a free government. The idea 
sought to be inculcated is, that no Christian can maintain 
his good profession and be a public man. This is in direct 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 69 

conflict with the plain teachings of our Lord and the ear- 
nest exhortations of His greatest apostles. It is fruitful of 
infinite mischief to the public good. Suppose this theory 
should become general practice? Suppose Christian men 
withdraw from any activity in public affairs, social and 
national ruin would be the inevitable result. But this, hap- 
pily, is not true. Many of the truest and purest Christians, 
jealous and zealous for the honor and glory of God, have 
been the greatest patriots and left imperishable memorials 
of their unstained honor and uncorrupted integrity. 

Third — This brings me to another lesson of the text. 
That the duties and obligations of citizenship are impera- 
tive. There is not only no conflict, but these are of binding 
force. It is not at our option whether we shall be actively 
concerned for the state or not. St. Paul exalts this among 
the authoritative sanctions of conscience, "Not for wrath, 
but for conscience sake." If this ideal citizen shall ever be 
a universal reality — this carrying a conscience into every 
measure and station — we shall well-nigh have ushered in 
the morning of the millennium when the kingdoms of this 
world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His 
Christ. 

As American citizens, what are some of these duties? 
First, to exercise the privilege of the elective franchise. 
In republican governments founded upon and sustained by 
the popular will, it is a Christian's citizen's highest 
duty to use the power of the ballot in the interest of 
good government. In the palmy days of Athens, the 
citizen who failed to vote the second time was put to 
death — a man who cared so little for his country as not to 
vote for it was not considered worthy of its protection. It 
is idle — yes, it is criminal — to complain of corrupt officials, 
when by indifference and inactivity we have seen them 
foisted into position and power. We need an exalted con- 



70 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

ception of our national honor, so that each individual will 
carry a conscience into the discharge of his duties. 

Second — Obedience to rightful authority. We all need 
the restraining hand of law — the majesty of its behests 
should command our grateful obedience. It is perilous to 
the honor and prosperity of a free government when citi- 
zens at will, disregard constituted authority, and assume, 
or usurp the power of law. Here is possibly the weakest 
spot in our great democracy. Account for it as we may — 
analyze and catalogue the causes as skillfully as you please 
— fact remains that just here is the menace to our free 
institutions and the danger of our time. 

With sorrow of spirit, but with great plainness of speech, 
I feel constrained to plead for the sacredness of human 
life, the majesty of law and the integrity of government. 
The homicidal spirit of our section is a humiliation and 
calamity. We need not resent the statement or deny the 
fact, because narrow partisans make political capital out 
of it. Nor is it any defense to reply that other sections 
are equally guilty and as shamefully disgraced. It is a 
mournful fact, and demands speedy correction and coun- 
teraction. We need to execrate and forever exile that 
silly sentiment that wounded honor is to be revenged by 
the fatal trigger. To condone it is to cheapen human life, 
and put a premium upon brute courage. It is a sad com- 
mentary on our civilization to see the average young man 
in defiance of law, but sustained by a debauched public 
sentiment, promenading the streets as a walking arsenal, 
and going to and from his place of business a hip-pocket 
defender of imaginary reputation. It humbles our national 
pride to be told that with the exception of Italy and 
Spain, the proportion of murders to deaths in the United 
States is not exceeded on earth, where statistics are taken. 
"Out of every 10,000 deaths in England, seven are murders. 
Out of every 10,000 in the United States, twenty-one are 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 71 

murders." During the past four years there has been an 
aggregate of 25,557 known murders in this "land of the 
free and home of the brave." 

But even more disgraceful to our boasted Christian civ- 
ilization is the spirit of mob violence abroad in the land. 
When courts are disregarded and lynch law reigns the 
people may well put on sackcloth and ashes. There is no 
guarantee for life and property. The same defiant, mur- 
derous spirit that demands the life of one man without 
right of trial by jury will wreak like vengeance upon an- 
other if there be a supposed provocation. One such out- 
rage will make each participant an outlaw, and ever 
thereafter he will have a contempt for tedious processes of 
the courts. Lynchers are always law despisers. There are 
no crimes or circumstances that justify resort to lynch 
law. Its effects in deterring criminal classes from like 
deeds is lost in its deadly influence upon participants 
themselves. Without going farther back than a few years 
ago, I can give you figures that will bring the blush of 
shame to every one proud of being an American citizen. 
"In 1S92, for the 5,791 murders committed, 107 persons 
were tried by law and executed, while 236 were lynched 
by mobs, 231 -of them being men and five women; 129 
more persons were lynched last year by mobs than were 
executed under the law." And a full and shameful share 
of these were in our own great state of courts and 
churches, of homes and schools. In the name of God and 
humanity let us sustain the forms and majesty of the law. 
Pulpit and press, church and school must thunder an eter- 
nal protest until mobs are unknown, constitutional law 
sacredly enthroned and the infamous pistol forever pro- 
hibited. 

• The rule of the mob is chiefly due to the law's delays. 
The tedious and devious processes of the courts are the 
plausible plea for summary and ex-judicial punishment. 



72 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

Rarely would men resort to outlawry to avenge crime if 
they had any confidence in the prompt and impartial ad- 
ministration of the laws. Justice is defeated by long, and 
sometimes criminal delays. The more desperate the case, 
the more persistently and skillfully will counsel contend 
for a continuance. The gallows has been deprived of its 
rights because of such tactics and technicalities, and 
society made to suffer the scourge of unpunished crime. 
On the most frivolous pleas, the absence of an unimportant 
witness, the toothache of another, the indisposition of an 
attorney, and such like puerilities, cases have been con- 
tinued from term to term until they literally wear out. 
The bitter fruits of such judicial travesties are seen 
in the mob's "reign of terror" which so frequently disgraces 
our civilization. In the name of humanity and social 
decency, let us inaugurate a judicial reform. Most heartily 
do I approve the wise recommendations on this subject of 
our governor in his statesmanlike message presented to 
the legislature, and the practical solution of these calam- 
itous evils suggested by the retiring attorney general. I 
am sure those called to be the representatives of the 
sovereign people of our commonwealth will not disappoint 
the cherished hope that as far as legislation can effect it, 
speedy and sure relief will be given. 

The conviction and punishment of a criminal, after a 
fair and impartial trial, before a jury of his peers, is a 
moral education. There is in ft no passion — no over-riding 
of any legal rights or restraints — but a calm investigation 
and condemnation in the clear, cold light of reason, 
justice and humanity. The brutal violator of a little girl's 
purity was arrested in Georgia some time ago, and brought 
to the injured child's outraged father. Friends besought 
him to say the word and the villain should be lynched,* 
but like the true, well-poised citizen and Christian, he 
said: "Let the law take its course." Had he obeyed 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 73 

impulse when he thought of the child's ruin he would have 
revengefully replied: "Yes, let the brute swing to the high- 
est scaffold." We honor and commend such majestic 
manhood. 

And we should be very cautious and judicious in secur- 
ing the pardon of criminals. There is a morbid sentimen- 
tality in communities on this subject. Any man can get 
up a petition for executive clemency, however unprovoked 
and heinous his offense. Every such petition, unless based 
upon some exceptional facts, weakens and degrades law, 
and discounts human life. And yet there are volatile, 
sentimental people, who, under the spur of popular excite- 
ment, are ready to visit summary punishment upon a crim- 
inal, then hardly allow the gates of our state prison to close 
behind him before they begin to say, "Poor fellow," and 
are ready to sign a petition for pardon. 

And then we ought to prohibit the pistol by law. It was 
only made for human destruction. It is utterly worthless 
to the huntsman. He would starve for game if he had to 
rely upon a "Smith & Wesson," "lightning Colt's," or a 
"self-cocking Tranter." Their manufacture is a humilia- 
tion, and concealed upon the person they make the bloody 
history that has caused the South to become a by-word 
among civilized nations. 

Another sacred duty, though very prosaic and often un- 
pleasant, is to serve on juries. It is impossible to exagger- 
ate the importance of an intelligent and incorruptible jury 
system in the maintenance of law and order. What stu- 
pendous interests are imperiled! What vested rights are 
involved when placed in the hands of incompetent and 
venial jurymen. The most contemptible and vicious man 
in 'society is the professional juror — unless it is the "jury 
fixer." Men of character and active business have be- 
trayed the dearest interest of the commonwealth by plead- 



74 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

ing frivolous excuses to escape this most responsible duty 
of an American citizen. 

Fourth — A jealous regard for and the faithful support of 
those called to places of public trust. We should respect 
the man for his office. 'Tis honorable to be trusted with 
the suffrages of a people. At times we are afflicted with 
an epidemic of social and political suspicion. We exagger- 
ate the faults and foibles of public men, until we imagine 
the country is on the eve of impending and irretrievable 
ruin. It is common, if not constitutional, to complain and 
magnify the causes of complaint. We talk of corrupt 
officials, of machine politicians, of rings, and of national 
crises, as though the clouds of God's wrath were about to 
burst over our heads as over the ill-fated cities of Sodom 
and Gomorrah. This suspicion may harden into a habit, 
destructive of our peace and prejudicial to the public good. 
Office is not synonymous with dishonor — most men regard 
it as 'a sacred trust. Because here and there a man proves 
unworthy is no occasion for universal suspicion and con- 
demnation. 

But I must close. Whatever dark and bitter days we may 
yet be called on to pass through, I verily believe that God 
will make us a greater nation. We have not yet achieved 
the full purpose of our divine creation and ordination. 

During the battle of Hastings, when charge after charge 
was made by the Norman cavalry under the leadership of 
William the Conqueror upon the solid, unbroken Saxon 
lines of Harold, a report spread through the Norman ranks 
that the Duke was slain. Fear at once seized all hearts, 
and some would have fled from the field, but William gal- 
loped down the lines and exclaimed: "I am yet alive, and 
by the help of God intend to win a victory." This reas- 
sured their hopes and reinvigorated their Norman cour- 
age. The battle was won, and the Norman Duke became 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 75 

King of England. So today I would say, whatever may be 
our reverses, I believe that by the good providence we are 
yet to be a greater people. Grateful for the blessings of 
the past, by conspicuous fidelity to the duties and honors 
of citizenship, let us add increasing luster to our national 
glory. 



"WHERE IS ABEL, THY BROTHER?" 



By Rev. E. L. Eaton, D. D., Evanston, Illinois. 

Paradise and its day of sinless joy had passed from our 
first parents, and they went out crushed and broken to 
wage a weary battle — to toil, to suffer, to die! He, bowed 
but stern in manhood's strength; she, 
frail and weeping but clinging to him 
with a strength of devotion which no 
misfortune could ever destroy, both of 
them cheered and sustained by the 
declaration which Jehovah made to 
the tempting serpent: "I will put en- 
mity between thee and the woman, 
and between thy seed and her seed; 
it shall bruise thy head, and thou 
shalt bruise his heel." God's first 
promise to the human race! A prom- 
ise of great glory in the midst of deepest gloom! But the 
shadow of the Fall was upon the world. Sorrow was in 
the heart of the father, and care had set its seal upon the 
fair brow of the young mother, who pressed her first-born 
to her bosom, and with dreams of the old joy and visions 
of the gathering gloom, sang her first lullaby as the sun 
sank behind the western hills. Paradise was theirs no 
more — gone forever — was but a dream, but some of its 
-holy light still lingered upon the fair face of our first 
mother. 

Did that mother dream as she pressed her babe to her 
heart in the fading twilight that some day the brand of 

77 




78 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

God's anger would burn where now clustered the locks 
of gold? That the little hand which clung to the mother's 
neck would one day be crimsoned with a brother's blood? 

Thank God, the future is a land unseen! Infinite mercy 
hides it from our vision. If it were not so, what choking 
sighs, what scalding tears, what broken hearts this night 
— this very night — would witness! Who would have the 
curtain lifted? Who wants his fortune told? None but an 
insane man would dare to penetrate the awful mystery 
of the future until infinite wisdom shall lift the curtain. 
The holy joy in that mother's song was born of the fact 
that she*did not know that her little boys who grew up to 
manhood side by side would one sad day be estranged in 
heart. She did not know that when they came to build 
their altars of worship, one of them would bring of the 
fruits of his field an offering to God, but would make no 
acknowledgment of sin and of the need of a Savior; and 
that with his offering God would be displeased. And that 
the other, bringing of firstlings of his flock, would offer a 
sacrifice which, looking away down through the dim ages 
to the great sacrifice on Calvary, should please God and 
be accepted. She did not know that jealousy and anger 
would spring up in the heart of her first-born son, and that 
he would lift his hand in wrath to slay his brother! 

But, alas! he did; and there was a new cry in the 
world, and the earth drank its first baptism of human 
blood! Oh, the bitterness of sorrow that filled that moth- 
er's soul as she pressed the broken temples of her son to 
her aching heart, and knew that her first-born was a 
murderer ! 

"Alas, the fruit of our forbidden tree begins to fall." 
The blood of the first martyr rose to heaven, and God 
said: "Where is Abel, thy brother?" And the cowering 
criminal tauntingly answered: "Am I my brother's 
keeper?" 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 79 

And that has been the cowardly cry of Cain for more 
than 5,000 years. Every man of the race of Cain who 
wrongs his brother, seeks to exonerate himself from blame 
by this same old complacent whimper: "Am I my brother's 
keeper?" It is the taunt of the man who loves the al- 
mighty dollar more than he loves God or his fellowman. 
It is the satanic Cain-life in the man who would make and 
sell cigarettes to poison the heart and wreck the nervous 
systems of the boys in the street. It is this satanic Cain- 
life in men who would, for the almighty dollar, wreck 
the souls of the young and fair in brothels; that would 
keep gambling dens to steal the money and debauch the 
souls of men; that would make and sell beer and whisky 
to embrute and enslave and murder his fellowmen. It is 
the Cain-spirit that disclaims any obligation for a brother's 
welfare. It is the Cain-spirit that, ignoring and repudi- 
ating his duty to his brother man, fills the world with lust 
and greed and drunkenness. It is the Cain-spirit that 
curses our very civilization with saloons, and fills the land 
with their moral and physical wrecks! The supreme, con- 
creted, materialized spirit of the Cain-life is the saloon of 
our country today. And so I charge the saloon as being 
guilty of nearly all of the physical, mental and moral 
wreck which we encounter in this land. 

The saloon debauches the public conscience. It threat- 
ens every man with political or financial harm who op- 
poses the saloon. It intimidates good men in that way, 
aud thus secures their silence or their support. It has 
shown that its methods are conscienceless. It is a coward, 
which will strike, and burn, and kill in the dark. And 
thus it continues to reign in many places, because many 
otherwise good men would rather submit and acquiesce in 
this reign of rum and wrong, than to hazard the incon- 
venience and danger of a manly and aggressive warfare 
against it. This blatant braggart of the saloon has thus 



SO WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

made cowards of many good men. But, thank heaven, the 
day is passing when God-fearing and manly men are any 
longer to submit to the infamous wrong! And heaven 
pity the man who pretends to be a good citizen, who will 
stultify his soul to save his dollars! Who sells his man- 
hood to keep his money! Who will acquiesce in wrong to 
get rich! Who will consent to the reign of booze, though 
it may damn his neighbor's boys! "Oh, but there is such a 
revenue in the saloon licenses! Such a source of revenue 
to the city! Such taxes it saves the people!" Yes, men 
believe that it fills the coffers of the city treasury with 
gold. 

Go where night is darkest, and where broken hearts 
are bleeding over the ruin which your licensed saloons 
have wrought, sing the song of the almighty dollar, and 
tell them that for all their bitter agony your palm is filled 
with gold. 

Tell them that for gold you have acquiesced in the 
great wrong, and are now ready to lick the dust off the 
heels of saloonkeepers, to crawl through all the slimy sew- 
ers of political sin and municipal wickedness. Tell the 
shivering and hungry children that you have hoodwinked 
Providence and astonished the devil with a brilliant finan- 
cial hocus-pocus called a saloon license for cash paid in 
hand, that has taken the food from the mouths and the 
clothing from the backs of these helpless little ones, and 
has changed it all into gold — licensed gold! 

Tell the weary, haggard wife that this saloon license has 
put into your till in yellow gold a paltry percentage of the 
rose that once bloomed upon her cheek, her heart, her 
home, her happiness, her husband's love — all gone — and 
gone forever; but you hold ten per cent, of it, changed by 
the God-defying alchemy of saloon politics and rum rule, 
into yellow gold! 

Tell the poor drunkard, as in wild delirium he dreams 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 81 

that he can yet beat back the volcanic fires that consume 
him, that you have in your pocket the price of his deep 
damnation in yellow gold! 

Stand at the threshold of the asylum, and mockingly 
taunt the deformed, the squalid, the idiotic, the hungry 
and the insane victims of drink, with the news that out 
of their misery and ruin you have gathered a harvest of 
license gold! That the mills are still running, and that the 
curse is still moving on. 

Stand by the remorseless hinge of the prison door that 
shrieks after its entombed victim, and cheer thy brother's 
desolation with the news that you sold him to crime and 
shame for gold! 

Tell the ragged orphans in the streets that for a handful 
of yellow gold you deliberately became particeps criminis 
to that accursed infamy that robbed them of food and 
clothing, home, parents, education; that you deliberately 
sold them to poverty, shame and crime for gold, and a just 
God who demanded his brother's blood at the hand of the 
first murderer will press the fratricidal brand to your 
brow, and hold you to strict account for these little ones! 

Stand by the 100,000 new-made graves of the last 
twelve months' harvest, and, with the open Bible which 
declares that no drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of 
God, while reel before you the ghosts of uncounted thou- 
sands slain by the saloons licensed by the votes of 
Christian men, each lost soul justly taunting you with his 
deep damnation, tell them that the price of their death 
and damnation lies in your city treasury in yellow gold. 

As the awful pageant sweeps before the vision the fren- 
zied brain will think, and the aching heart will groan! 
But by and by the shrieks will grow faint; the remem- 
brance of the awful scene will fade 'away in the dim dis- 
tance; we will take up the routine of life and think that all 
is past and forgotten. But let us not forget, brother! 



82 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

We shall stand at last with that slaughtered host, face to 
face before God's judgment throne — the drunkard and the 
drunkard maker — the saloonkeeper and the sot — the Chris- 
tian voter who licensed that saloon, and the man whom 
that saloon murdered — the wrecked and ruined brother and 
the man who flippantly declares that he is not his broth- 
er's keeper — all face to face before the awful presence of 
Him whose voice seems to fill eternity with its thunders — 
"Where is Abel, thy brother?" 

The accursed saloon system ought to die! Our Chris- 
tian manhood, the Christian church, ought to go forth in 
the power of its Divine Lord and take the scalp of the 
infamous traffic and lay it down at the feet of its crucified 
Savior. The liquor traffic has outraged decency. As Sen- 
ator Carmack of Tennessee said: "It has sinned away its 
day of grace. It has forfeited its right to live any longer!" 

The American saloon is on trial as never before, and 
the legal proceedings will never end until it has been 
pronounced guilty and condemned to death! The aroused 
and indignant American people are now charging the 
saloon with high crimes and misdemeanors in the name of 
the good people of this country and of Almighty God. 
They are indicting the saloon — 

1. As a nuisance. According to the Standard Dictionary 
a nuisance is anything that works annoyance, harm or 
damage to others. And the legal definition of a nuisance 
is this: Any occupation that tampers with the public 
morals, tends to idleness and the promotion of evil man- 
ners, is a nuisance per se. And upon that legal ground 
Judge Ira W. Christian, of the Hamilton county, Indiana, 
circuit court, on the 13th of April, 1907, pronounced the 
saloon a nuisance. He did this because every common law 
definition of a nuisance is fully exemplified in the saloon. 
Tt has all the signs, features, earmarks, disease-producing, 
crime-breeding, death-dealing — all the horrid factors and 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 83 

qualities of a nuisance. Why, then, should not the courts 
be honest and pronounce it such? This status had rarely 
"been adjudicated by any court; and so Judge Christian 
crossed the bloody chasm between the abstract and the 
concrete, and boldly pronounced the saloon a nuisance and 
declared that as a nuisance it could not be licensed nor 
protected by the Constitution of Indiana; for that Con- 
stitution says that: "We, the people of the State of Indi- 
ana, grateful to Almighty God for the free exercise of the 
right to choose our own form of government, do ordain 
this Constitution to the end that justice may be estab- 
lished, public order maintained, and liberty perpetuated." 

2. I indict the American saloon as a fraud, a prevari- 
cator, a purveyor of falsehood. Prevaricator is the diction- 
ary word for liar. It is vicious, but it always denies it. 
It is the breeding place for crime and arson, but it never 
owns up nor pleads guilty. Its witnesses in court always 
lie; its advocates juggle with words and smuggle in false- 
hood; its jurors violate their oaths, and whitewash the 
saloon's blackest crimes. And there is no deception known 
to the arts of wicked men that it will not resort to, to 
cheat the gallows and rob the prison and perpetuate the 
saloon curse upon the community. 

What does it not always promise the poor victim of 
drink? But its very promises are lies. It promises him 
a good time, and gives him sorrow and heartache. It 
promises him a happy home; but go to that home and you 
will see that generally it is a hovel, and no home at all. 
Instead of happiness it is generally hell! It promises him 
wealth, but it makes him a pauper. It promises him good 
cheer, but it fills his waking hours with remorse and his 
dreams with horror. The drunken son will go staggering 
home to his mother with a lie upon his lips. The husband 
will try to deceive with a lie the wife who has waited for 
him till past midnight. The hard-up will blame every- 



84 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

thing for his poverty but the saloon. He will borrow 
money of you to buy a coffin for his dead child, and will go 
straight to the saloon and spend every cent of it, and tell' 
you the next day that he was robbed of the money, and 
ask to borrow more. When too drunk to work, he will lie 
to bis employer and say he has the grip! 

It lies to the poor man and the laborer when it tells 
them that temperance means the destruction of their per- 
sonal liberty. It says: "Drink; you have a right to eat 
and drink when and what and where you blank please!" 
And that's personal liberty! And so the poor laborer 
drinks, and enjoys his personal liberty, and thanks God 
that he is no fool fanatic like those temperance men! 
Not he! He has personal liberty! And so has his wife 
personal liberty — the personal liberty to take in washing 
to keep the children from starving; his children have the 
personal liberty to pick up coal beside the railroad and 
carry it home in bags to keep from freezing; the family 
have the personal liberty to eat salt horse and sour bread, 
while the father of the family enjoys his personal liberty 
to buy furs for the saloonkeeper's mistress, pay for music 
lessons for the brewer's daughter, and foot the bills for 
the distiller's son's blow-out! Personal liberty! Sure! 

The saloon lies, when it says, as it is now saying, that 
it is a source of revenue to the city, and profitable to the 
city's business. The saloon is a source of revenue to 
itself alone, and source of poverty to everybody else but 
the coffinmaker and the grave digger. It impoverishes the 
city. Carroll D. Wright has told the American people for 
a dozen years that the state never gets one dollar of rev- 
enue out of the saloon that does not cost the state $20! 
The city of Beloit, Wisconsin, licensed a saloon for $50, 
and then two men got drunk in that saloon, and that drunk 
cost the city $600! 

It is reported that Kosciusko county, Indiana, received 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 85 

$2,000 in license money from her saloons in one year, and 
during that year there were two saloon murders which cost 
that county $13,000! 

This country gets about $200,000,000 internal revenue 
from the liquor business annually; and we get about 
$100,000,000 annually for license fees. That makes about 
$300,000,000 in all. Now in order to get that amount Amer- 
ica spends annually for liquors $1,250,000,000. That is the 
direct cost of her liquors. The indirect cost is about as 
much more; the two together then would be $2,500,000,000. 
That means that every time America gets $3 in revenue 
from the liquor traffic she pays out $25. 

When the saloons of Logansport tell you, as they have 
recently done in the public prints in that town, that the 
saloon is a source of revenue and of business to Logans- 
port, the saloon lies. It claims that it has added to the 
business and financial resources of this city in the em- 
ployment of men, and horses, and rents, and horse feed, 
blacksmithing, electric power, water and gas taxes, license 
fees and railroad freights, the sum of $160,000 in one year. 
That is the income. Now, what is the outlay? Sixty sa- 
loons taking in $25 per day each for 300 days will make 
$450,000. So for every $16 they took in they paid out $45. 
But that is not all. The indirect cost was certainly half 
as much — the crime, pauperism, police, loss of labor, acci- 
dents — these cost that city half as much more — $225,000! 
That makes $675,000! But that is not all. While their 
laborers and poor men were drinking $450,000 worth of 
liquor, they were not buying pork and beef and flour and 
sugar and boots and shoes and clothing and furniture 
and building themselves homes and putting in them pict- 
ures and carpets and pianos and musical instruments and 
libraries. So the business of Logansport was robbed of 
another $225,000 easily enough. Now, if you will put these 
three items together — the direct cost of the liquors, the 



86 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

indirect cost, and the loss of purchasing power of the 
citizens, you will have the sum of $900,000. That is what 
the saloons cost the people of Logansport every year; and 
they get for it $160,000 in license fees and business! Six- 
teen dollars into the pockets of the people, and $90 out. 
One dollar in, and $5.62 out! And that is the way the 
saloons enrich a city! 

3. I indict the saloon as an anarchist. It is a violator 
of all law, human and Divine. God says: "Woe to him 
that putteth the bottle to his neighbor's lips and maketh 
him drunken also!" The saloon is constantly engaged in 
blasphemously defying that injunction, and in inviting that 
curse. When did the saloon ever keep the civil law? 
When did it ever refuse to sell drink to the minor, to the 
man who is drunk, or an habitual drunkard, or on Sundays, 
or at unlawful hours? When? Never, unless it is watched 
day and night by policemen! In most cases it bribes the 
policeman with drink so that it may break the law. What 
is it doing at this hour in Chicago? Arraying all its power 
against the holy Sabbath, the law of God and man! It 
would destroy our Christian Sabbath, the very thing that 
has done more than anything else this side of the stars 
to make our country great and free. It is the Christian 
Sabbath and what that stands for which has made this 
country what it is, a land so great, so free, so attractive, 
that the poor oppressed and tyrant-ridden people of every 
land have been attracted to come here to get what they 
could not find in the old world. What base ingratitude, 
stupidity and moral suicide it is in them, as soon as they 
get here, to proceed to break down the very institutions 
which have made this country so attractive to them! Yet 
that is exactly what millions of them are doing; and the 
saloon leads them all in this suicidal anarchy. 

The saloon is an anarchist when it continually prates 
that "prohibition don't prohibit." That statement is a 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 87 

confession of its crimes, for it is equivalent to saying that: 
"We intend to break the law and to defy the government." 
And there is not one foot of land on earth where the law 
prohibited the liquor traffic, that that traffic has not defied 
the law like an anarchist, and tried to break it down. 
"Prohibition don't prohibit." Of course it don't prohibit. 
Will an ax chop? an augur bore? a knife cut? a saw saw? 
a sausage grinder grind sausage? an incubator incubate? 
But put a live agent behind those tools and there will be 
something doing! 

Sheriff Pearson of Portland, Maine, had no trouble in 
enforcing the law. 

Governor Folk of Missouri is having no trouble in keep- 
ing the "lid" on in St. Louis. 

Mayor Evans of Minneapolis is having no trouble in 
keeping the "lid" on in Minneapolis. 

Kansas City, Kansas, is having no trouble in making it 
a saloonless town. Ask the brewers and saloonkeepers of 
Kansas whether the law can be enforced! 

There are eight states now under prohibition, and there 
are nearly one hundred cities where the law is enforced 
and the saloon ousted. The largest city in the world to 
outlaw the saloon is Atlanta, Georgia, a city of 160,000! 
The last saloon in Atlanta died at 12 o'clock midnight on 
the 31st day of December, 1907, and this is the first record 
that Atlanta gives the world as to whether a no-license 
law can be enforced: January 4, 1907, sixty-three criminal 
cases tried in court, for crimes of various sorts growing 
out of the drink curse. January 4, 1908, such cases re- 
duced to seventeen! On January 4, 1907, there were 
thirty-two drunks in jail; on January 4, 1908, there was 
not one! Prohibition- prohibits in Atlanta all right! One 
of the most remarkable testimonies as to the effectiveness 
of prohibition is given to William E. Curtiss by Senator 
Curtiss, of Kansas, and printed in the Chicago Record- 



88 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

Herald for January 13 of this year. Senator Curtiss, of 
Kansas, who gives this testimony, was an attorney for 
the saloons for a long time; but when elected district 
attorney of the county in which Topeka is located he went 
to work to enforce the law as his oath of office required 
him to do. Hear what he says: 

"I do not think that Topeka or any of the other cities 
in which the law has been enforced are any less prosperous 
or progressive than those in which the law has not been 
enforced. I believe that Kansas is a better state under 
prohibition than it would have been under high license or 
local option or any other system of regulations. At least 
it is not worse, and prohibition certainly has had a marked 
effect in diminishing crime and poverty. 

"I cannot speak personally of any other city except To- 
peka, for that is my home, and there I know by personal 
experience that the criminal dockets of our courts were 
always full prior to the enforcement of the prohibition law, 
and the county attorney's office was kept continuously busy 
preparing for criminal prosecutions. The first term of 
court when I was county attorney there were 100 criminal 
indictments besides a large number of informations. But 
as the saloons were closed and the liquor traffic was sup- 
pressed the number of criminal cases gradually decreased 
until the last term of court while I was in office there was 
not a single indictment. 

"The jails and poorhouses throughout the state are 
usually vacant. If the sheriff has any boarders they are in 
for horse stealing or for other offenses which cannot be 
attributed to whisky, and the only people you find in the 
poorhouse are helpless old men and women or cripples, 
who have no other means of support and are not brought 
there because those who should take care of them are 
spending their money for liquor. 

"There is no poverty in Kansas; no community in the 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 89 

history of the world was ever better off. Up to the recent 
financial flurry the deposits in our banks averaged $100 
for every man, woman and child in the state, and the later 
returns show an average of $80 per capita in the banks." 

4. I indict the saloons as satapic The saloon has come 
to be the lowest, vilest, wickedest thing in this country 
today! It is the mightiest and most effective agency that 
the devil has on earth. It corrupts the voter, debases his 
manhood, neutralizes his citizenship, and puts him in the 
chain-gang of Gambrinus. It terrifies politicians, makes 
cowards of statesmen, fools of Christians, asses of city 
mayors and monkeys of candidates for office! It corrupts 
our city governments and robs the people. It paganizes 
our school system wherever it can, and plunders our homes 
of health, virtue, wealth and hope! It makes a mother a 
beast, and 2,500 of these drunken beasts wallow on their 
own babies in bed every year and kill them. 

It quenches the last ray of hope in the hearts of its vic- 
tims, and 5,000 of them commit suicide every year! It 
ruins the home, and is the almost universal cause of di- 
vorces. Four courts in Chicago in one day granted almost 
one hundred divorces. And the judges said that the saloon 
in almost every case was the cause of it all. According to 
the Chicago Tribune, nearly one thousand drunken hus- 
bands murdered their wives last year. Oh, the wreck of 
homes, the death of love, the murder of human happiness! 
It kills 40,000 husbands every year, and sends weak and 
defenseless widows out to toil for bread to save their chil- 
dren from starvation. In the old half-civilized days, when 
chivalry was on the throne and knighthood was in flower, 
the homes and mothers and children were safe; but in 
these more civilized but degenerate days we license for 
money a cormorant gang of thieves and scoundrels, and 
turn them loose to rob and ruin our homes and to break 
our mothers' hearts! 



90 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

Nearly all the social impurity that poisons our national 
life is born in the saloons, wine rooms, beer dens, beer 
gardens, wine suppers and beer picnics and other drink- 
ing resorts. This is the corrupter of youth, and the ruin 
of our girls; and 60,000 of them are annually ensnared in 
these drinking dens. Brain muddled, the voice of mother 
and conscience drowned in beer, will paralyzed, moral 
resistance overthrown, passion inflamed, girlhood wrecked 
— the brothel — the dark river of death! and all is over! 
Sixty thousand annually! All laid at the door of this ac- 
cursed saloon, this breeder of crime. "The highway to the 
house of shame, both for men and women, lies through the 
saloon. There is scarcely a saloon anywhere that does 
not have a brothel for a bride. The saloon in front, gam- 
bling den in the rear, and the scarlet woman overhead, is 
its trinity of perdition! Nearly every one of those horrible 
scandals that have filled the public press, poisoned the 
public mind, with their theft of virtue, is but a long story 
of embruted men and drugged women, from the uncorked 
demijohns of the leprous saloon." 

The saloons of this country are the cause of starting 
100,000 persons every year upon a life of crime. Thieves, 
robbers, burglars, murderers, the whole spawn of the crim- 
inal classes are bred and nurtured in the saloon. Wipe 
out the saloon and the incentive to crime would almost 
disappear. Drunken parents breed paupers, idiots, epilep- 
tics, and thus the saloon adds 100,000 to the list of de- 
mented and insane every passing year! We have millions 
of paupers and yet scarcely any one in America ever 
travels any other road to poverty except the one that lies 
through the saloon. And that turns out 200,000 every year 
for the community to take care of. 

America digs 100,000 graves for drunkards every year, 
and in them we shovel 100,000 drink-murdered men, "earth 
to earth, ashes to ashes; looking for the resurrection at 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 91 

the last day; but for no life in the world to come, for God's 
Word declares that no drunkard can inherit the kingdom 
of God." 

This is awful! When the Iroquois theater burned in 
Chicago about four years ago 600 men, women and chil- 
dren were suffocated or roasted alive in one hour. The 
whole world shuddered. In imagination we see the little 
children beating their torn hands against windows and 
doors that were barred against them, and our sympathetic 
hearts almost break with the agony of it. Six hundred in 
one hour! But the saloons murder 600 every two days. 
One every five minutes! Twelve every hour! Three hun- 
dred every day! One hundred thousand every year! 
Since the Iroquois theater destroyed the lives of 600 the 
American saloons have murdered the bodies and damned 
the souls of 400,000! Yet conscience sleeps! 

This is awful, but it is not all. While one undertaker is 
busy in burying 100, 0Q0 drink-murdered men, the saloon is 
busy day and night in starting recruits to take their vacant 
seats in the death chamber; and so we have 250,000 
saloons, each starting two ycung men and unsuspecting 
boys each year to add half a million to the army of Gam- 
brinus! The saloon is satanic! This is the work of the 
devil ! 

Form a procession of its annual victims. The 2,500 
smothered babies, the 1,000 murdered wives, the 5,000 
suicides, the 9,000 drunken murders, the 40,000 widows, 
the 60,000 ruined girls, the 100,000 who begin a life of 
crime, the 100,000 who are either born idiots or become in- 
sane, the 100,000 who annually fill drunkards' graves, the 
200,000 annually robbed and pauperized, the 500,000 who 
annually start on the down grade through the saloons, 
draw them all up in a line — more than eleven hundred 
thousand annual victims, whose condition is as bad as or 
worse than, death! Give them just one yard of space each, 



92 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

and start them west from Chicago, they will reach to the 
Mississippi river, across the State of Iowa and forty-seven 
miles beyond Omaha! An awful line of sorrow, and pov- 
erty, and crime and death, 635 miles long! A line that 
fills hell with glee and heaven with tears. A line that will 
grow longer and stronger as long as the saloons are al- 
lowed to operate. A line that can be melted and dissolved 
and obliterated by the votes of Christian men! 
Will we do it? The glorious opportunity is upon us! 

"Once to every man and nation, 

Comes the moment to decide, 
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, 

For the good or evil side — 
Some great Truth, God's new Messiah, 

Offering each the bloom or blight, 
Parts the goats upon the left hand, 

And the sheep upon the right ; 
And the choice goes by forever 

'Twixt that darkness and that l : ght." 



THE PROBLEM OF DRUNKENNESS 



By Hon. Oliver W. Stewart, Chicago, III. 

I am to speak to you today on the problem of drunken- 
ness, and I make no excuse 'for bringing that subject to 
your attention. When it is remembered that we have over 
200,000 saloons in this land, and if a 
saloon produces anything at all, it 
produces drunkenness; if it turns out 
anything at all, it turns out drunk- 
ards; one would need to offer no ex- 
cuse for bringing that subject to the 
attention of a thinking body of people. 
So without wasting a single moment 
of your time, I propose to plunge into 
the very midst of what I have to say 
by asking, first of all, this perfectly 
natural and obvious question: What "Is 
it gives us drunkenness? It is perfectly plain that when 
you reduce that to a sort of last analysis and answer it in 
the very simplest of terms, that drunkenness comes from 
getting the man and the drink together, is not that true? 
Is it it not always true? If you see a man going down the 
street drunk you know that in that case the man and the 
drink were brought together. You may not be able to 
tell where, and you may not know how, but you do know 
that they came together as certainly as if you had wit- 
nessed the event transpire. Let it be said once more, that 
you cannot get a drunken man without first bringing the 
man and the drink together. 

93 




94 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

If drunkenness comes from getting the man and the 
drink together, then the next question becomes equally as 
important: What is it causes the man and the drink to 
get together? If I could throw some light on that subject 
this meeting would be well worth your while. In this con- 
nection two things must be considered. What is it causes 
the man to come to the drink, and what is it brings the 
drink to the man? 

Let us consider these in their natural order by taking 
the man first. What is it brings the man to the drink? 
Before the appetite is set up, before the habit is estab- 
lished, the man may come to the drink from any one of 
dozens of reasons, which I have no time to consider today. 
If I mention three, or say at the most four, I will do ample 
justice by that side of the case. 

The man may come to the drink at the start on account 
of heredity. That is the story of the boy with a drunken 
father, from whom he inherits a weakness or tendency in 
that direction, which makes it easy for him to follow in the 
footsteps of the drunken father who has gone before him. 

Or the man may come to the drink at the start on ac- 
count of his environment. He was raised in an atmosphere 
of drink. Friends, brothers, companions, all drink, so that 
long before he could guess the harm or evil or danger of 
it, he, too, has formed the habit of drink. 

The young man may go astray on the business side of 
his life. In some new town a thousand miles from his boy- 
hood home he hangs up his shingle or puts out a sign, and 
starts the battle of life for himself. Early in his career 
he comes in contact with a wealthy banker, or a prominent 
lawyer, or leading merchant, who in the course of a busi- 
ness transaction invites the young man to take a drink, 
and he, fearing a refusal may offend, and anxious to make 
business friends, takes the first drink. Of course, he mis- 
judges the effect of a refusal. Were he, calmly, to tell the 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 95 

big business man that he had a pledge not to drink, which 
he must keep, he would be urged promptly to keep faith 
with himself, and others. But not knowing that, the young 
man gets stampeded and starts the downward way. 

If he escapes the business temptation, he may go down 
on the social side of his life. He is invited into the home 
of a leading family of the community, and he goes, over- 
joyed at the invitation which gives him social standing in 
the place where he struggles for success. It may be a din- 
ner party, and his hostess puts wine before him. What is 
he to do? I mean, as he sees it, what is he to do? He 
looks up and down the table, and notes that all others 
drink. He fears a refusal may offend his hostess. To keep 
his standing he drinks. But one may urge that a little 
glass of wine does him no physical harm. I am not speak- 
ing of the physical harm. I am thinking of his soul, and 
the fine moral fiber that it takes to make a real man, and 
on that side of it I do not hesitate to say that even if it 
were proved, as it has not been, that the wine would be 
helpful and beneficial for him to take, yet having promised 
himself that he would not touch it, he cannot break that 
pledge without suffering harm in his moral character 
which will not soon be repaired. 

But I am wasting your time. In this present discussion 
it is not so important to know what it is starts the man at 
the drink, as to determine what it is keeps him at it. What 
is it brings the old drunkard to the drink, after he knows 
that it spells misery, heartache and ruin for himself and 
family? There is but one answer to that question. It is 
the appetite which does that. He, who would make a 
study of the problem of drunkenness, must write large on 
that side of the account that the appetite keeps the drunk- 
ard coming to the drink. 

So much for that side of it. We have been considering 



96 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

what brings the man to the drink. Now let us turn to the 
other side. What is it brings the drink to the man? 

At the beginning that is a story of selfishness and greed. 
And I would let it go at that, and not say another word 
about it, if it were not for the fact that I am so extremely 
anxious to be absolutely fair and just to the saloonkeeper 
in all that I may say today. If there were a saloonkeeper 
here to plead his own cause he might say: "I do not bring 
the drink to the man because I like to make him a drunk- 
ard. I do not bring the drink to the man because I enjoy 
the heartache of his wife, or the suffering and poverty of 
his children. But the fact is the man will be a drunkard, 
anyhow; he will break the heart of his wife, anyhow; he 
will impoverish his children, anyhow. And since it all will 
happen, anyhow, I may as well get the profit from it as to 
have anybody else get it, and so as a matter of business I 
bring the drink to the man." 

The saloonkeeper may say that if he will, but the man, 
who, because he can he will, coin the heartache of women 
and the poverty of children into dollars for himself, has 
no right to whine or complain if some public speaker, 
standing before an audience like this, asserts that selfish- 
ness and greed must underlie that business. 

Having said that much, I am forced to say one other 
word. I have found many good people who, in their study 
of this question, never get any farther than the greed of 
the saloonkeeper for gain. They say the saloonkeeper 
brings the drink to the man because there is profit in it. 
Then let us doctor his profit. In other words, let us ar- 
range a condition of affairs in which the saloonkeeper can 
make no profit out of bringing the drink to the man. Let 
us have the state operate the saloon, and sell the stuff so 
cheaply that no private individual can make a dollar out 
of the business in competition with the government. And 
the question is asked: Would not that put the privately 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 9 7 

owned saloon out of business? I think it would. Would 
that be a good thing? I am not quite so sure about that. 
When the privately owned saloon is put out of business by 
opening up a governmental saloon in the place of it, then 
when a man gets drunk he will be governmentally drunk, 
and I fail to see where the advantage would be in that. 

If there is to be a saloon on the corner, doing the harm 
and evil that a saloon ordinarily does, I do not care wheth- 
er that saloon is run by Paddy Flynn or Ole Oleson. It is 
not the name painted on the front of the saloon that does 
the harm; nor would it be any different if you painted the 
name of the state on the front instead of the name of the 
.private individual as it now appears there. 

I sometimes think we ought to pray the Lord to give us 
a great baptism of sanity in the study of this question, to 
the end that we might see that when a man goes into a 
saloon and gets drunk and then goes home to beat his wife 
or mistreat his children, he does it because he is drunk on 
whisky, not on the profit the saloonkeeper made out of 
selling it to him. Let it be repeated, he does not get drunk 
on the saloonkeeper's profit. He gets drunk on the saloon- 
keeper's whisky, and he would be just as drunk if the 
saloonkeeper gave him the whisky. And there would be no 
profit in that at all. He would be just as drunk if he broke 
into the saloon and stole the whisky, in which event there 
would be the saloonkeeper's loss instead of his profit, 
about which to trouble our minds. But the man who stole 
the whisky and drank it would be just as drunk as if the 
saloonkeeper had made a handsome profit out of it. 

I have said myself that I think the saloonkeeper's greed 
for gain is a factor in this problem, and I expect to con- 
tinue so to believe, but I can mention something else so 
much more important than his greed for gain, that it 
makes that look small by comparison. 

More important even than the saloonkeeper's desire for 



98 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

profit is the protection that the law of the state gives to 
him as he brings the drink to the man. Take away the 
protection of the law from the saloon, leaving it upon the 
same footing as the cut-throat or burglar, and the business 
would be come too risky to be inviting to the average man. 
Did you ever stop to think what the effect would be if we 
had the saloon exactly as we have it now, except that we 
had it outside the pale or protection of the law? Here the 
saloons are, just as numerous, but not a one of them has 
any more right under the law than would have a hold-up 
man to rob you on the street. 

If such were the condition, the saloonkeeper would be in 
danger at every turn of the road. He would never know' 
when a lot of old drunkards would sober up and call on 
him and notify him that since he had no more right to take 
advantage of their appetites for drink to get their money 
than he would to rob them, they would proceed to protect 
themselves from him and the business by as much force as 
might be necessary. If such were the condition, the sa- 
loonkeeper would look the old drunkards over and con- 
clude that the situation was, to say the least, extremely 
interesting. 

If not the old drunkards, the drunkards' sons might wait 
upon him, and one of them speaking for the rest, say: "Mr. 
Saloonkeeper, we are the sods of some drunkards in this 
community. For years you have been making a living off 
of them and their families, and we have just learned that 
you have no more right under the law to be in this busi- 
ness «than you would have to cut the throats of our fathers 
who patronize you. We have come in to notify you that 
you are going to quit, and we will use our good right arms 
to put you out of business if need be." If the saloonkeeper 
who listened to this were outside the pale of the law, and 
could not call upon mayor, police, governor or militia for 
protection, he would look his visitors over and say: "All 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 99 

right, boys; if that's the way you feel about it we will close 
up," and that place would be locked up that minute. 

Of course, he would not quit because he had to — I know 
that as well as you do — he would quit only because he 
wanted to, which would be as effective as to have him 
quit any other way. The point is, that if saloonkeepers 
had to face the sons of the drunkards of the state, without 
any protection under the law, they would begin to lose 
interest in the business. 

Even if they could keep the old drunkards quiet and 
their sons still, the saloonkeepers never would know when 
the women would break loose in the community. They 
could not tell a thing about that. A dozen good women get 
together at the home of some poor woman who has suf- 
fered at the hands of the saloon. They take food and med- 
icine to her and her children; do what they can for her, 
and then one woman insists, that having done all they can 
for her and her home, they ought to do something about 
the saloon, which is the cause of this distressing condition. 
It is insisted by another woman that they can do nothing 
about the saloon; that they are only women, and that they 
have no votes and therefore do not count. And that is 
true, and it is wrong. 

I am not here to make a woman suffrage speech, but I 
shall say this much about it and let it go at that, that if a 
man could not see the everlasting right of woman suffrage, 
based on a. fair, square deal for everybody, on the ground 
that you, a strong man, would not withhold from another 
human being a right which you would fight for in a minute 
if anybody tried to withhold it from you, any man ought to 
be able to see that a woman ought to have the same right 
to the ballot with which to protect her home and her fire- 
side that the saloonkeeper has to the ballot with which to 
protect his saloon. 

"But," says another woman, "while we have no ballot, 



100 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

neither has the saloonkeeper any right under the law to be 
there in that business, and we have two hands apiece. Let 
us go over and clean him up." Would not that be an inter- 
esting moment for him? Would it not be for you, if you 
were the one they were after? Five minutes later some- 
body comes rushing into that saloon and says to the pro- 
prietor: "What do you think; there are a dozen women 
coming down the street with brooms and mops, and they 
say they are going to clean you up." 

He would touch only the high places in getting out of 
the county. 

I am right about that. I am absolutely right about it. 
The protection the law gives the saloon is a necessary 
thing for the saloon to have. Take that protection away 
and the business would become decidedly risky and dan- 
gerous for the saloonkeeper. 

Let us take one moment to see what we have gained so 
far in this address. I think we agree that whatever may 
have started the man to the drink, it's the appetite that 
keeps the drunkard coming to it. Whatever may have 
started the saloonkeeper into the business it is the protec- 
tion of the law that enables him to stay there. The appe- 
tite of the drinker on the one side and the protection of 
the saloon by law on the other side get the man and the 
drink together. That gives us drunkenness. 

If drunkenness comes from getting the man and the 
drink together, sobriety must come by keeping the man 
and the drink apart. That is a cure which was never 
known to fail. Keep the man and the drink apart and you 
will have the man sober. But notice this fact closely, that 
when you undertake to keep the man away from the drink 
you are doing temperance work; when you undertake to 
keep the drink away from the man you are doing prohi- 
bition work. And that is the difference between those two 
things. I have found many bright, intelligent people one 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 101 

time and another who have insisted that there is no dif- 
ference between temperance and prohibition. There is the 
whole wide world of difference between those two things. 
Temperance deals with the drinker; prohibition deals with 
the drink. Temperance is a personal matter; prohibition 
is a governmental matter. Temperance has to do with 
the attitude of the individual toward drink habits and cus- 
toms, prohibition has to do with the attitude of the govern- 
ment toward the drink traffic and the drink business. The 
whole wide world rolls out between temperance and prohi- 
bition. 

True enough, the purpose is the same. That is to say, 
the purpose of temperance work is to give us sobriety. 
The purpose of prohibtion is to give us sobriety. Temper- 
ance would give us sobriety by keeping all men away from 
the drink. Prohibition would give us sobriety by keeping 
all drink away from the men. It must be plain that when- 
ever either plan succeeds we will have a sober manhood. 

"Which of those two things ought we to work at?" says 
one. And the moment one asks that question he betrays 
the fact that he has not thought this thing through to a 
finish yet. We ought to work by both plans. We ought to 
lay hold of the drinker with the left hand of temperance 
and pull him one way, and lay hold of the saloon with the 
right hand of prohibition and pull it the other way. Thus 
getting the two at arm's length — the drinker at the end of 
the left arm of temperance and the saloon at the end of the 
right arm of prohibition — and I guess the man would be 
sober. 

But what is the policy generally in effect in this country? 
It ought to make you blush to have me speak of it. We. 
take hold of the drinker with the left hand of temperance 
and wiggle and twist and squirm in an effort to get him 
away from the saloon. Then with the right hand of license 
we continue jabbing the saloon right up under his nose, 



102 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

and then we wonder that the saloon keeps so close to the 
drinker. 

License is not a means by which to keep the saloon 
away from the drinker. License is the consent of the gov- 
ernment to the saloonkeeper to go after the drinker, and 
having paid for the privilege, he goes after him and quite 
generally gets him. 

What ought we to do? I have answered that question 
already. We ought to apply temperance to the drinker, 
or to the young man or boy who may become a drinker, 
and we ought to apply prohibition to the drink. For the 
strongest argument that can be found for temperance on 
the one side, there can be found an equally strong argu- 
ment for prohibition on the other side. 

But that brings me counter to an objection. Some good 
man doubtless is making it in this audience now. It is to 
the effect that a prohibition agitation divides good men 
because, as has already been said, prohibition is a govern- 
mental question. Men see the governmental questions 
from the party point of view, and that means division, be- 
cause the republican looks at it from one standpoint, the 
democrat from another, and the prohibitionist from anoth- 
er. So my good friend or kindly critic urges that we give 
up prohibition and say no more about it. But in place of 
it we start the greatest temperance crusade the world ever 
saw, and that we do not quit until the last drunkard has 
been saved and until every young man has had his feet 
turned into the right path. 

Thus temperance would be established, sobriety would 
become the rule of our life and the liquor traffic would die. 
"Why," says the critic, "do you not work by this plan?" 
And there is just one reason why it cannot be done that 
way. I mean one big reason. There are a hundred little 
reasons, but I shall not bother to mention one of them. 
The one big reason covers the entire case. It is to be 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 103 

found in the fact that the drunkard, as to the matter of his 
being, or continuing to be a drunkard, is not a free moral 
agent. The drunkard is not a drunkard because that is the 
thing he wants to be. Not one drunkard in ten thousand 
is such because at some time or other in his life he sat 
down and calmly said: "I have thought it all over and de- 
cided that I would rather be a ragged old drunkard than 
to be a sober, decent citizen." The drunkard is not a 
drunkard from judgment. The drunkard is a drunkard 
from appetite, and you cannot reason with an appetite. 

And that is why this problem cannot be solved by ap- 
pealing only to the drunkard or drinker. If it could be 
solved that way the preachers of this country, alone and 
unaided, would settle it for us in the next sixty days. The 
difficulty is that our appeal goes to the drunkard's heart, 
mind, soul and conscience, and meantime it is his appetite, 
which leads him out to get drunk again. Our appeal does 
not touch his appetite. 

Arid now we come to the queerest thing in modern gov- 
ernment. This state, which will note mental distress or 
weakness, and will at once take the victim in hand and 
provide for his safekeeping, and protect his own interests, 
and the interests of his family in his property (when such 
mental distress or weakness is indicated in other ways 
than by drink) absolutely declines to recognize the drinker 
or drunkard for what we know him to be, and the cause 
of his condition for what we know it to be. 

Did you ever stop to think what would happen if men did 
other things as they drink? If they bought other things as 
they buy drink? Let us trace one case of that sort in 
imagination. Let us suppose that a man starts out tomor- 
row morning to buy overcoats as other men buy whisky. 
What would happen to him? 

He hurries down town and buys an overcoat before 
breakfast. After breakfast he goes down and g~ets another. 



104 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

In the middle of the forenoon lie gets another, and just be- 
fore neon another. First thing after noon he gets together 
with a lot of old cronies and buys them a lot of overcoats 
and they buy him a lot, until by the middle of the after- 
noon he has sixteen overcoats on his hands. Then he 
starts home with his bundle of overcoats. He is so heavily 
loaded he lands in the ditch. I have seen men in this state 
so heavily loaded with whisky that they landed in the 
ditch. This man is loaded with overcoats and into the 
ditch he goes. Friends and neighbors lake pity on him. 
They help him up, take him to his home, and leave him on 
the doorstep with his sixteen overcoats. 

His wife finds him there and when she asks him where 
the groceries are he answers: "You can search me. I did 
not get any groceries. I got overcoats." But the poor 
woman does not care for overcoats. She is far more inter- 
ested in groceries. She insists on knowing how the hun- 
gry children are to be fed. His answer is: "I will get gro- 
ceries before night. I found a man who wants to buy this 
little home of ours and he is ready to pay me cash on it, 
and when we get the money I will buy me a whole house 
full of overcoats. I am going down town to see him now." 

And as he starts down town she comes across lots to 
your home because you are her husband's best friend. 
Perhaps you were boys together. She knows that if there 
is a man in the town can save him now you are the one. 
Bursting into your home, sobbing and weeping, she tells 
you the story, and entreats you to do what you can for her 
and her children that they may not be rendered homeless. 

You start down town at once, and you find him in a 
clothing store, trying on his seventeenth overcoat. You 
know the rest of that story. It may not be forty-eight 
hours until you have your friend in court. He may appear 
there as quiet and calm as any mortal you ever saw. He 
says: "Yes, I bought the overcoats, sixteen of them. They 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 105 

are good coats, too, and they all fit me. I never would buy 
a coat if it didn't fit. And now you threaten to send me to 
the asylum because I spend my money as I please. When 
other men in this county spend their money as they please 
no one says a word about it. Some men buy horses, some 
automobiles, some dogs; 1 buy overcoats, and I intend to 
keep on buying them. I propose to leave here now and to 
sell my home, and I'll spend the last dollar for overcoats 
and I dare anybody to stop me." 

He starts down the aisle and the judge nods to some 
deputies who at once clap the handcuffs on him and he is 
railroaded straight through to the asylum. Is not that 
true? It makes all the difference in the world whether one 
buys overcoats or buys whisky. If a man buys overcoats 
all day you send him to the asylum. If he buys and drinks 
whisky all day you are more likely to send him to the leg- 
islature. 

And if you would like to know what would happen to you 
if you took a very freakish sort of turn to yourself, you 
start out tomorrow morning to buy a bushel basketful of 
scissors, one pair at a time. Go down town and buy a pair 
of scissors. Take them home and drop them in the basket, 
Go down and get another pair, and keep it up all day long, 
and you will not get the bottom of your basket covered 
before you will have your neighbors talking about you. As 
you go along the street they will peek out from behind the 
curtain, and 'say: "See him? There he goes again. That 
if the fifth pair he has bought this morning. And he in- 
sists he is going to keep it up until he has the basket full 
of them." Next thing you know you and your basket and 
your scissors will all land in court. There will be a short, 
quick investigation, and your scissors will go back to the 
store and you will go right straight to the asylum. Get an 
attack of scissoritis if you want to see what will happen 
to you, and you will discover that a man can not spend 



106 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

his money as he pleases. The very moment you spend 
your money in such a way, or act in such a manner as to 
betray the fact that you have ceased to be a free moral 
agent, just that moment the state will step in and take 
charge of you. And that will happen every time as to 
everything, except the drink. That is the one monumental 
exception. 

To show you what I mean by that, let us suppose you 
have an old-time friend who is a periodical drunkard. I 
sometimes think that of all the drunkards on earth, a 
periodical drunkard most deserves sympathy. I have seen 
some of them make magnificent fights trying to get upon 
their feet and into a cleaner manhood, only to slide back 
into the ditch again and once more to renew the effort for 
better things. This friend insists that you could save him 
if, when the time comes for him to get drunk again, you 
would stay with him and when he goes into a saloon 
would follow him in and drag him out. This you are to 
do no matter what he says or does. And you agree to it. 
He tells you it will be two weeks before the appetite will 
return with overwhelming force. You agree to be on 
Avatch, determined that he shall not slip away from you, 
and that you will keep him sober that day. 

When the day comes you undertake to do your part. 
When he boards a train to get away from you, you go with 
him. He pleads the excuse of business at some nearby 
city. You go along. After attending to two or three mat- 
ters of business, he darts into a saloon. You are right in 
after him. He admits that he remembers the promise, but 
announces that he has decided to call the whole arrange- 
ment off. You inform him that he has not called you off.. 
He proposes to drink, anyhow. To keep your promise, you 
lay hold of him and start to drag him out. You waken up 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 107 

a little later in a police court, with three witnesses against 
you. , 

The first is your friend and neighbor, who testifies that 
he was getting a drink when you came it and reminded 
him of a promise, which he informed you was canceled. He 
says he warned you to let him alone, but that when he 
went to take his drink you jerked him away from the bar 
and finally started to drag him out, and that you' probably 
would have pulled him out on the street, but for the police- 
man who came in and arrested you. 

The second witness against you is the bartender. His 
testimony is to the effect that you started a fight in the 
saloon, and that after trying vainly to get you to desist he 
had to call in a policeman who arrested you. 

The third witness- against you is the policeman. It is 
worth going a thousand miles to hear him testify. He 
says: "Your Honor, I was passing a saloon." And every- 
body knows that is a thing a policeman seldom does. His 
testimony further is to the effect that he found it impossi- 
ble to do anything with you; that you seemed determined 

to drag the other man out; so he finally had to hit you 

» 

with a club, and he identifies you as the prisoner at the 
bar. 

The upshot of the whole affair is. that the judge who 
knows you to be a man of reputation, comments upon that 
fact, but is still forced to do his duty. He fines you $10 
and costs, and threatens you with the county jail if there 
is another offense of the same sort. That is the prize 
package you get out of that thing. 

Would you keep your neighbor sober? By no means. 
He would go back and get drunker than ever while they 
were trying you. You cannot keep your neighbor sober 
by that process, even at his request. It is a remarkably 
strange thing to which I am calling your attention. If a 
man buys overcoats to excess, you interfere and he goes 



108 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

to the asylum. If a man buys scissors to excess, you in- 
terfere, and he goes to the asylum. If a man buys drink to 
excess, you interfere and you go to the asylum. 

But somebody objects that this is all true, but still he 
can not see what is to be done about it. My answer is that 
the one thing to be done about it is to make the saloon 
an outlaw. State and national prohibition must result 
from the logic" of this situation. 

More than one of my hearers is ready to take up the 
fight along that line, or would be but for his doubts as to 
whether or not prohibition is effective. He is in a condi- 
tion of uncertainty of mind because of the conflicting tes- 
timony that can be had as to the effect of prohibition in 
Kansas, Maine and other states. Yet it would be possi- 
ble in less than a minute to determine for ourselves 
where the truth must be in this conflict of testimony. 

Let us try it. If prohibition is a failure, as saloon men 
say it is, and they ought to know, it is a failure because 
where you have prohibition there is more drinking and 
more drunkenness than where you have the open saloon. 
If -such is not the case prohibition is not a failure. 

If there is more drinking and more drunkenness under 
prohibition it is because more drink is bought and sold, for 
what one man drinks is what some one has bought and 
what some one has sold.. But that is the very point that 
saloon sympathizers make against prohibition. They say 
there is more liquor business in prohibition states than in 
saloon states. If that is the case, why do not the distillers 
and brewers turn in and help us get prohibition in the 
whole United States? The truth is, the one thing the 
liquor traffic fights is prohibition, which is the one thing 
which could be made effective against the saloon. 

This the American people are coming to see. When once 
they get clear Vision upon this thing, no party and no 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 109 

combination can stand against the overwhelming desire 
of the people for the destruction of the liquor traffic. The 
skies are bright with promise. The signs of victory can be 
seen on every hand. Let us push on with renewed con- 
fidence, with faith unshaken, and with zeal unabated. 



ATTITUDE OF COLORED PEOPLE OF THE 
SOUTH TOWARD THE TEMPER- 
ANCE MOVEMENT 



By Rev. H. H. Proctor, D. D., Atlanta, Ga. 
We negroes form one-tenth of the population of the na- 
tion, and one-third of that of the South. I have been asked 
to tell what our attitude is toward this great temperance 
wave which is sweeping the nation 
and flooding the Southland. Broadly 
speaking, let me say that the best 
sentiment of my race favors this 
movement. Roughly divided, there 
are two great elements within the col- 
ored race. One is that element of 
which very much is known. This 
class is not intelligent, and has formed 
no opinion of value upon this or any 
other great question of the day. It is 
in the child stage of its existence. 
But there is another element. Of this class the general 
public knows all too little. It is intelligent, law-abiding, 
home-loving, sober and industrious; it is as deeply interest- 
ed in the great questions that stir our nation as is any 
other element in American life. This element is truly 
American. This class is especially interested in this move- 
ment, and regards the abolition of the saloon second only 
in importance to the manumission of the American slave. 
The best sentiment of my race favors total abstinence for 
the individual and prohibition for the state. 

in 




112 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

Let me state some of the reasons why my people favor 
this movement. One is that it promotes prosperity. We 
are yet a poor people, as every one can very well under- 
stand. In times of adversity the poor man suffers the 
most; it is therefore to the advantage of my people that 
prosperity prevail in the land. They have begun to think, 
and they believe that prohibition promotes it. Crime is 
expensive. There are three forms of human activity: 
business, charity and crime. Business is service with 
profit; charity is service without profit; crime is profit 
without service. The saloon is profit without service; it is 
therefore crime, and crime is a foe to prosperity. In 
Georgia, when the saloon was expelled the first day of this 
new year, the panic has been felt less than in any part of 
the country where the saloon exists. We were free from 
the sinkhole of the saloon, and the money went into the 
necessities of life. As a result these hard times have seen 
more beefsteak, more shoes, more clothes go into certain 
homes in Georgia than were seen even in times of pros- 
perity, for the open door of the saloon had been shut in 
the face of the man too weak to pass it by. 

Another reason why my people favor this movement is 
because it promotes reliability of labor. The black man 
today has a monopoly of the labor market in the South. 
But under the new conditions that are fast coming in that 
section the black man can not hold this monopoly unless 
he meets the situation that will soon be upon him. The 
South must compete with the nation; it can not do it 
unless there prevails a higher grade of efficiency among 
its laborers. Unless the black man increases in effic- 
iency other laborers should be brought to take his 
place. One condition of increasing his efficiency is to keep 
him sober, and to do this the saloon must be moved from 
his pathway. The man who knocks off early on Saturday 
and spends Saturday night in a drunken carouse and Sun- 
day in a drunken stupor is not prepared to render efficient 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 113 

service on Monday. The sober laborer who goes home on 
Saturday night and spends his earnings with his family 
and goes to church on the Sabbath is ready and alert and 
strong for a whole week's work on Monday. Under the 
old regime the black man's arm has cleared the fields of 
the South, spanned its streams with bridges, macadamized 
its roads, made its fields to laugh into a harvest; he has 
done this half sober. Under the new, with a clear brain, 
a steady arm and a determined purpose, he will cause 
the Southland to blossom as a rose and help develop those 
resources which have yet but been barely touched. The 
South is the unexplored repository of the raw material of 
the land, and with an intelligent, reliable labor element 
will yield the nation untold wealth. 

They favor prohibition for still another reason, and that 
is it promotes law and order. The black is not a criminal 
race. In fact, when it comes to great crime the black 
man has the cleanest record of any race in history. I 
speak to men who know history; you cannot point out in 
all history one great black criminal. The Jew gave the 
world its Judas Iscariot, the Roman its Nero, the Saxon its 
Benedict Arnold; but I defy you to point out one great 
black criminal. It turns out that with respect to great 
crime the blackest hand in nature is the whitest in history. 
But where my race falls is in petit criminality. It is 
drunkenness that is the chief cause of this petit crim- 
inality. In Atlanta, the chief city in Georgia, prohibition 
cut this petit criminality in twain. It has done it all over 
Georgia, and it will do it all over the South. That is why 
I stood before the temperance committee of the Georgia 
legislature and pleaded that the white men who have taken 
to themselves the ballot would rise up and remove this 
curse from the weaker element of my people. As this is 
being done not only is petit criminality being removed, 
but the womanhood of the South is made safer. The 
best sentiment of my race believes in the protection of 



114 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

womanhood. If any man, black or white, lay unholy hands 
on a woman, white or black, let him die the death, but at 
the hands of the law and not a mob. 

Still another reason why my people favor prohibition is 
that it promotes peace between the races. The people of 
the South are tired of race friction. We need peace. It is 
hard enough to keep a white man and a black in peace 
when they are sober, but if they are drunk it is out of 
the question. Whisky was the inflammatory cause of the 
Atlanta riot, and it was only when the whisky was re- 
moved that sober heads were able to bring peace out of 
confusion. The presence of so many negroes around the 
dives where whisky was the chief attraction led the whites 
mistakenly to believe, in view of the commission of a 
series of unspeakable crimes, that negroes were turning 
to crime. It was from the open saloon that the mob rushed 
to wreak vengeance upon the blacks, without regard to 
guilt or innocence. When the riot broke out the mayor, a 
w T hisky man, touched his pen and closed up every saloon 
in the city for nine days. When it was thought safe to re- 
open saloons one-third of the original number were closed 
permanently and the one hundred remaining were cor- 
ralled in the heart of the city. Also, a law was enacted 
preventing whites and blacks drinking in the same saloon, 
lest an outbreak occur. When Christmas came the mayor 
again arbitrarily closed every saloon in the city, and for 
the first time Atlanta had a sober Sabbath-like Christmas. 
No wonder that when the Georgia legislature met the 
best sentiment of the State, white and black, argued thus: 
If it is a good thing to Close all the saloons a part of the 
time and a part of the saloons all the time, is it not a 
better thing to close all the saloons all the time? To 
this appeal the Georgia legislature nobly responded, and 
by an overwhelming majority put Georgia at the head of 
the sisterhood of Southern States by expelling the saloon 
from its borders. The fire thus kindled is to burn until we 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 115 

shall have a solid dry South. King Alcohol is to be de- 
throned in the realm of King Cotton. 

But we feel that this movement must be more than nega- 
tive. It is good, indeed, to close a door of darkness. This 
is good as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. 
As a door of darkness is shut a door of light must be 
opened. But, sad to say, when the black man turns to the 
door of light, too often he finds a color line drawn across 
it. To meet this difficulty a vision has been given to me. 
It is this: Substitute the open church for the open saloon. 
The present victory in the temperance movement is due to 
the long, hard, patient work of the church, and my people, 
fortunately, are wedded to their church. But the life of 
this church is narrow and unattractive. Enlarge it so as 
to appeal to body and mind as well as soul — even as the 
Founder of the church originally intended — and you have 
in its enrichment the perfect substitute for the saloon. 

As a constructive prohibitionist I am actively engaged in 
leading my people to plant at the heart of the Southland 
a church that will differ from the ordinary church in three 
particulars: (1) It will be open to all the people instead 
of a part of the people. (2) It will be open all the time 
instead of a part of the time. (3) It will be open for the 
betterment of the whole man instead of a part of the man. 
Specifically, it will meet the needs of the forty thousand 
colored people in the city of Atlanta and ideally furnish 
a model for the colored race all over the land. In addi- 
tion to the ordinary facilities of a church it will have these 
features: A library that intelligence may be diffused, a 
Bible school that the fundamentals of a true life may be 
grasped, a gymnasium that innocent amusement may be 
made a vehicle for the higher life, a bath that cleanliness 
may be inculcated, a model kitchen that unskilled girls 
may be taught to raise cooking to the dignity of a fine art, 
a sewing room that the poor children may be clothed so 
as to come to church, a kindergarten that the children 



116 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

may be reached, a parlor where hard-worked women may 
rest under the influence of wholesome surroundings. 

I am happy to say that this vision is becoming a fact, 
and that in the work of its realization we are being gen- 
erously assisted by people of the North and the South. 
Significantly it is raising in the heart of the city of Atlanta, 
where ran that mob on that fateful Saturday night, stain- 
ing, indeed, the streets of the city with innocent blood, 
and yet unconsciously knocking the bung out of every 
whisky barrel in Georgia and the South. In the rise of 
this model church building I see the rainbow of hope 
spanning the shoulder of the dying storm of racial hate. 
With the fall of the open saloon and the rise of the open 
church there will be no war of the races in the South. 
With the passing of the darkness and the coming of the 
light there will be peace between the two peoples, diverse 
in color yet, after all, one at heart. 



THE SALOON AND THE ETHICAL 
REVIVAL 



By Dr. Clinton N. Howard, Rochester, N. Y. 
The childhood of the twentieth century is face to face 
with an ethical revival, and it reaches around the world. 
A whole hour could he spent under a foreign flag. If you 
ask where, and I should call the roll 
of the nations, England would answer, 
"Here"! France would answer, 
"Here"! Russia would answer, 
"Here"! Spain would answer, "Here"! 
Japan, Turkey, yea, and even heathen 
China would answer, "Here"! The 
imperial edict abolishing the opium 
dens of the Flowery Kingdom is the 
most conspicuous example of the 
world-wide ethical awakening to be 
found beyond the sea. But we need 
not go abroad today to find the ethical revival; we are in 
the midst of a moral and ethical awakening in Christian 
America that overmatches that to be found in the nations 
of Europe and Asia. 

The modern methods of doing business are being revised 
and made to conform to the same ethical standard that 
we apply to private conduct, and the same moral code 
that holds good between man and man. 

Journalism is feeling its touch, as indicated by the abun- 
dant example of larger independence on the part of the 
press, the higher moral conception as shown by the more 

117 




118 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

frequent and lofty treatment of ethical questions, and the 
growing tendency to eliminate objectionable advertising. 

In education — by a growing recognition that moral phi- 
losophy is as important to the making of an efficient citi- 
zen as geography and mathematics; in medicine — with a 
growing concern about the effect upon the moral as well 
as the physical character of patients, in relegating to the 
rear remedies that leave worse effects than those they 
cure; an ethical revival in social life, by a more general 
recognition of the single standard of conduct for both 
sexes, establishing one standard of purity, the white life 
for two, culminating at no distant day in a national law 
governing marriage and divorce, of which we now have 
some forty-six varieties; an ethical revival in politics, a 
new moral standard as a necessary qualification for pub- 
lic office, an account rendered to G-od and to the people, 
instead of the boss, so evident that the word need only be 
spoken. All along the political horizon the outlook is 
brightening; larger independence, more exalted ideas of 
citizenship, higher quality of men in public office. Yester- 
day it was the exception; today is has become the rule. 
An ethical revival in business, journalism, education, med- 
icine, social life and in politics. 

But none of these, nor all of them put together, approach 
the ethical awakening in China, which has culminated in 
the prohibition of the opium traffic. The answer to this 
might be, that we do not have in this enlightened Christian 
country any institution that corresponds in baseness 
of character to the opium dens of heathen China. There 
is no reason why an intelligent Chinaman, familiar by 
long residence, with both countries, should not be a com- 
petent witness. At an important gathering held in New 
York City, the editor of the San Francisco Chinese paper, 
made an eloquent address, in which he protested against 
what he called our unjust and un-American emigration 
laws that excluded his countrymen from rights and priv- 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 119 

ileges which all others enjoyed. He said: "You have 
singled out my people from all human creation, as un- 
worthy of your American hospitality; you let in the Italian, 
you let in the Hun, the Turk, the Jew and the Russian; 
you let in the underworld of Europe and Asia — the idle, 
the ignorant and criminal, and you shut out the peaceable 
and industrious Chinese. Because, you say, we are heathen 
and smoke opium. You say the truth; we are heathen, 
and we do smoke opium; but you are Christian and you 
drink whisky." And he said: "If I were woman I rather 
my husband smoke opium every time than drink your 
Christian whisky. Opium puts him asleep; opium makes 
him harmless like corpse; whisky makes him wild beast; 
whisky wakes up devil and makes him brute. 'Merican 
man come home full whisky — kicks wife; Chinaman comes 
home full opium — wife kick him. You be Christian and we 
be heathen!" And he said: "With my knowledge of your 
American saloon, if I were to return to my country, and 
the issue were a choice between the opium den of my 
heathen China and the saloon of your Christian America, I 
would choose for my people opium rather than whisky." 

The foreign gentleman makes a very intelligent discrim- 
ination in favor of his own national sin, because the pen- 
alty for that sin is confined more wholly to the man who 
commits it; while with drink the penalty falls with more 
crushing weight upon the innocent — the family, the wife, 
and the little ones — who must share the consequences with 
the drinker, from the mother to the infant on her breast; 
yea, to the child unborn, whose body and character must 
carry upon them the curse of their drunken father. It fore- 
dooms childhood to damnation at the hour of its drunken 
conception. 

The heathen gentleman is right when he damns the sa- 
loon; but he is mistaken when he speaks of the saloon as 
a Christian institution, in any other sense than because 
it has been tolerated by organized Christianity, and is to 



120 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

be found only in Christian countries. As an institution it 
is as un-Christian as anything to be found in the Chinese 
kingdom; more — it is a thousand times worse than any 
heathen abomination that ever cursed this earth. For a 
generation we have been sending missionaries to the be- 
nighted heathen, to turn them from the worship of idols 
to the only true God and licensing in our own land, within 
two hundred feet of our temples of worship to that same 
God, an institution that is worse than the one from which 
we seek to save them. Idol worship, at is worst, never 
cursed a man or a home as the saloon at its best. Any 
wife could be a hundred times better off with a sober 
heathen for a husband, and little children a thousand times 
better off with a sober heathen for a papa, than to have a 
civilized drunkard for either husband or father. There is 
not a misfortune in all the world that I would not prefer 
for my three sons than to live the life and die the death of 
a drunkard, or for my three daughters than to marry a 
drunkard for a husband. I would rather have my boys 
bow down to Baal than to bow down to a bottle. It is not 
Christian. The word of God that shuts the door of the 
Kingdom against the drunkard, condemns the whole 
drunkard-making institution, Sunday and week-day. It 
pronounces a woe upon those who are mighty to drink 
wine; a woe upon the men of strengtn who mix it; a woe 
upon the man who puts it to the lips of his neighbor; a 
woe upon the civilization that justifies for reward the 
wicked who sell it, and proclaims the doom of a people who 
build a town with blood and establisheth a city by iniquity. 
Moreover, our Lord was manifested to destroy the works 
of the devil; He taught that a tree was known by its fruit; 
and He has given us ears to hear, and eyes to see, and a 
nose to smell, and brains to think and a heart to feel; and 
the man with these five senses who fails to identify the 
authorship and ownership of a tree that produces such 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 121 

fruit as the American saloon, would miss the hole in the 
tunnel if he pulled the throttle of the train. 

The fruit of the saloon is diabolic to the individual; de- 
moniacal to society, devilocratic to the State. 

"Distilled damnation," said Sir Robert Hall — and he was 
right; "The devil in solution," said Sir Wilfred Lawson — 
and he was right; "Poisoners general," said John Wesley — 
and he was right; "Artist in human slaughter," said Lord 
Chesterfield — and he was right; "Worse than all the crime 
on earth," said Lord Bacon — and he was right; "More de- 
structive than war, pestilence and famine," said William E. 
Gladstone — and he was right; "A cancer in human society," 
said Abraham Lincoln — and he was right; "The most crim- 
inal method of assassination for money ever adopted by 
the bravos of any age or nation," said John Ruskin — and 
he was right. 

And Dr. Henry Ostrum correctly labeled the saloon when 
he called it "A hell perpetuator, a hell propagator, and a 
hell populator" — and he was right! 

That is not very fragrant, but you cannot expect the per- 
fume of roses when a polecat is on the dissecting table. 
If the brimstone in the saloon offends your refined noses, 
God pity the wife of the drunkard; God pity his children; 
God pity the unborn! 

The conclusion is, that we do have in this Christian 
country an institution that corresponds — that exceeds in 
baseness of character — the curse of China; and if heathen 
China, in defense of her childhood and nation, can abolish 
the opium dens of Hong-Kong and Canton, Christian Amer- 
ica ought to abolish the worst saloon, or call home our 
Christian missionaries, and send for a few Confucians to 
come over and civilize us. 

And it is right here that our ethical revival approaches 
in magnitude that of the heathen kingdom, for Christian 
America is doing the thing that she ought to do. The 



122 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

thing that ought to happen is once more coming to pass — 
the saloon is going. 

The American people are growing tired of this record 
of anarchy, assassination, taxation and rum. Let us not 
take too seriously the promises of this confirmed criminal 
to reform; let the death sentence be suspended and it will 
forget all about the promises to be good, made in the 
shadow of the gallows. 

It never has obeyed the law and it never will. The first 
organized rebellion against the laws and authority of the 
nation was made by the anarchist saloon, in the whisky in-: 
surrection, which cost the Washington administration an 
army of 15,000 men, and the largest single expenditure of 
the infant government to suppress. This nation was not 
yet twenty years old when the liquor traffic rose in rebel- 
lion against the law; and it has been in rebellion ever 
since. It never has obeyed the law and it never will. We 
make a tariff law and the importer obeys it; a currency 
law and the banker obeys it; a pure food law and the 
grocer obeys it; a highway law and the driver obeys it; a 
game law and the sportsmen obey it; a health law, and the 
expectorator obeys it — but we make an excise law, a law to 
regulate the isaloon, and this devil of drink hangs out its 
red rag of anarchy, spreads its fingers in the face of the 
authorities — hires a spotter to sneak in the initiated, hangs 
up an electric buzzer to make a fool of the policeman, and 
says to the people: shut the front door — and I'll open the 
side door; shut the side door — and I'll open the back door; 
shut the back door — and I'll open a cellar door; seal me 
up like a tomb — and I'll open an annex with a subway to 
the bar; clean up a ward — and I'll open a pipe line from 
the brewery to the cellar; cast me out of your county— and 
I'll make a blind tiger out of the express office and put on 
a John Doe jug train; make the state dry — and I'll sneak 
over the line with a coffin for a cask! You can't tame me; 
you can't muzzle me; you can't civilize me; I will desecrate 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 123 

your Sabbath; I will debauch your citizens; I will outrage 
your sons and daughters; I will wreck your homes; I will 
sell your drunkards and children; I will override your 
laws!" Yes, you old demon, you always have, but 'you are 
reaching the end of jout rope; the worm is turning; the 
people who have been crawling and craw-fishing at the 
crack of this slave-driver's whip, are rousing themselves to 
throw off this yoke, and the hand that wrote the sentence 
of death on the wall at the feast of the drunken King Bel- 
shazzer, is writing — writing — writing — the doom of the 
American saloon on the wall of this Christian republic. 

Never since the flood has water reached as high tide, or 
engulfed so great wickedness as in this year of our Lord, 
nineteen hundred and eight. The ark of prohibition has 
begun to touch the high places of the earth. The star that 
a few years ago was seen only in the east has become a 
constellation of towns and cities, counties and states, and 
shines today upon thirty-five millions of people under the 
American flag; the stone that the builders rejected has 
become the head of the corner, is falling upon the Ameri- 
can saloon and grinding it into powder. "My soul doth 
magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in G-od my 
Savior; for He that is mighty hath done great things, and 
holy is His name!" 

For a. generation we have cried, O Lord, how long? O 
Lord God, to whom vengeance belongeth, how long shall 
the wicked triumph? how long shall they utter and speak 
hard things and all the workers of iniquity boast them- 
selves? How long shall they break in pieces Thy people 
and afflict Thine heritage? How long shall they slay the 
widow and the stranger, and murder the fatherless? How 
long shall they gather themselves together against the soul 
of the righteous and condemn innocent blood? How long 
shall they boast themselves and say, The Lord shall not 
see, neither shall the God of Jacob regard it? 

And at last the answer comes — like the voice out of the 



124 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

midst of the burning bush on the back side of the desert: 
"I have seen the affliction of my people; I have heard their 
cry, and I am come down to save them." And, forthwith, 
the storm breaks against the saloon, like a hurricane upon 
the deck of a pirate ship. The chariot of the Lord, and 
the horsemen thereof is riding down the devil's saloon. 
Jesus Christ is walking across the American continent — 
every place his holy foot is lifted leaves a dry spot! It 
has but one meaning — the saloon must go; the liquor traffic 
must and shall be destroyed. 

Never before in the history of the fight were all things 
working together for good, for the glory of God and the 
salvation of humanity from the curse of drink, as they are 
working now. Now is our salvation from the curse nearer 
than when we first believed. "Put ye in the sickle, for the 
harvest is ripe; come, tread ye for the wine-press is full, 
the fats overflow, for their iniquity is great; multitudes in 
the valley of decision — in the valley of decision — for the 
day of Jehovah is near!" Verily, verily, I say unto you 
this generation shall not pass away until all these things 
be fulfilled. For there be some standing in our midst today 
who shall in no wise taste of death until they see the king- 
dom of prohibition come with power in the United States 
This is the meaning of the ethical revival. 



REASONS FOR THE SOUTH'S AT- 
TITUDE ON TEMPERANCE 



By Eugene M. Webb, Knoxville, Tenn. 
I have come from the sweltering heat of the Southland 
into the balmy and refreshing breezes of the lake region, 
to mingle for a season with strangers, to revel in the boy- 
ish delight of a freedom seldom hoped 
for and more seldom enjoyed; to gath- 
er and take back with me a bit of zeal 
for the daily duties of life. I can not 
express my appreciation of your wel- 
come, and much the less can I render 
due thanks for the privilege and op- 
portunity of addressing so great an 
assembly gathered here for so great a 
purpose. I find here full demonstra- 
tion of the fact that brotherly love 
unites all true American hearts what- 
ever the clime and whence they come into Christian fel- 
lowship and patriotic communion. We are here today in 
obedience to our country's call. Some to speak; others to 
hear; and all to renew our courage and enthusiasm for the 
warfare we are waging in behalf of the American home 
against its arch enemy — the American saloon. We are 
here to contemplate its outrages against humanity, to take 
council together, then to return to the various scenes of 
activity with a renewed patriotic zeal, to the end that we 
may win other and greater victories and save more boys. 
Yonder in the shades of a Southern city, dodging away 




125 



126 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

from the blistering heat of the midsummer's sun, skipping 
to and fro beneath the boughs of the benignant elms, two 
bright-eyed children play, whose burdens for a season and 
whose destiny in the future years God, the Almighty, has 
placed in my hands. In their behalf, fighting their cause, 
and that of others who play in their sweet innocence while 
waiting the day of their initiation into the conflicts and 
temptation of a sterner world, I come to speak. Cognizant 
of the seriousness of my position as a father, burdened 
with my responsibility as a citizen, I have gone up the 
valleys and over the hills of eastern Tennessee pleading 
with my fellowmen to do a nobler part by the coming gen- 
erations. We owe it to the children to thrust the arm of 
our power into the future and remove from the pathway of 
their career every obstacle that would thwart God's pur- 
poses in their lives and wreck the possibilities for their 
usefulness and happiness. At the threshold of the future 
I see no greater or more dangerous enemy than the open 
saloon. 

I stood a few years ago in the supreme court room of 
my home city and heard the justice pronounce a decree of 
fifteen years upon an innocent-looking lad of 17, convicted 
of murder. I saw the strong-armed marshal lead that boy 
from the court room and place around his wrists the cold, 
icy iron of the law. I saw the officer break loose the last 
loving embrace of the gray-haired father, and saw the old 
man reel and stagger against the wall as he bathed his 
withered face in the briny tears of a broken heart, and 
writhing in pain he wended his way from the temple of 
justice toward the open grave that waited outside — all be- 
cause the state whose virtue he had fought to maintain, 
for the sum of 3 cents revenue, had sold, through its 
licensed agent, a saloonkeeper, that boy a bottle of whisky, 
robbed him of reason and made him over into 1 a maniac 
and a murderer. It was there that I planted in the vault 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 127 

of heaven a vow to smite that business, hip and thigh, 
wherever opportunity afforded, to take up the cause of my 
fellowmen against its cruel injustices. I am here today in 
obedience to that vow, and may the God, whom I love, aid 
me to do good. 

You doubtless wonder, as others do, why the South has 
taken its stand against the liquor traffic, and you ask the 
reasons for its attitude. Some people think this a radical 
move in the South, and declare it a sort of hysteria, or 
fanaticism. Others think it a gorgeous parade, headed by 
the women, with the men joining the ranks to receive the 
smiles and tender caresses of the fair warrior captains at 
the winning of a victory. Others still who think the South 
has found something new to startle the nation with. But 
while there are various opinions, all ask the question why 
this land of tolerance, this land of personal liberty, priding 
itself in the freedom of its citizenship, this land of appar- 
ent indifference to so many of the sterner conflicts of de- 
velopment that make material resources count in the com- 
mercial world, why should it, after sleeping through the 
many years, suddenly arouse itself from its lethargy, break 
up its camps of ease and start the march of conquest 
against its long caressed indulgences? Why should it, 
Brutus-like, thrust a dagger into the very heart of its 
ruling influence and send its victim to the ground writhing 
in the pool of its own blood and dying at the feet of a 
parent victor? Why this spectacular conflict with the 
liquor dealer, the dive-keeper, and the ward politician? 

It- is a well-known fact that the Southern gentleman, the 
negro, and the political leader in ante-bellum days and 
since bowed side by side in humble reverence and wor- 
shiped the god of appetite, whose offsprings of vice, infamy 
and crime have been the common associates of the South- 
ern saloon for generations preceding this day of reform, 
and that, Southern hospitality, without wine, to many 



128 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

would have been as a wedding without ceremony, as a 
dance without music, and as a home without a family. 
Thousands of the noblest of our men have sacrificed upon 
the altars of Bacchus the wealth, ambition, places of pre- 
ferment, natural gifts and personal attainments. 

Notwithstanding these facts you will find that the fight 
against the saloon evils is not a sudden movement in the 
South. It is as old as Anglo-Saxon liberty. It was born 
when our English fathers wrought from King John at Run- 
nymede the English charter. It has been fought for upon 
every battlefield, and has been followed through the gen- 
erations by the strong faith of our fathers that never 
wavered along the stormy road to American liberty. Back 
yonder, when our fathers were building in bloodshed and 
tears our institutions of peace and freedom, battling 
against the tyrannies of an insane king, they fought and 
fondly dreamed that they were dying to perpetuate a lib- 
erty that knew justice, a civilization that knew virtue, a 
government that knew mercy, a manhood that knew thrift, 
and a courage that would dare pit itself against oppression, 
whatever its form and wherever born. And we, their de- 
scendants, taught to cherish their spirit of self-sacrifice 
and valor, have been led to believe that patriotism required 
us to rise against the Southern saloon because of its atro- 
cious injustice to the poor and the weak; because of the 
bloodshed and crime it has occasioned; because of the 
political oppression it has caused us to bear; because of its 
open and arrogant disregard of the law; because of its cor- 
rupting influence over men; because of the deadening 
blight it has fastened upon our agricultural and industrial 
enterprises; because of the idleness it festers; because of 
the racial strife it has engendered; because of the wealth 
it consumes; because of the multitude of homes it has 
wrecked; because of the paupers it has made in our midst; 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 129 

because of the hope it has crushed and the ignorance it has 
bred. 

The strife has come on with more rapid pace in the 
South only because the wickedness of the saloon has been 
supreme there, and occasion has given rise to keener con- 
flicts because of racial differences. 

When the war was over and the ragged soldiers turned 
from scenes of carnage on bloody battlefields towards the 
homes they had left, looking right and left, front and rear, 
they beheld on every hand sorrowful reminders of the 
havoc wrought by war, the barren fields, and deserted 
chimneys blackened by fire smote their hearts with chilling 
despair. Overwhelmed with poverty as the common lot 
they staggered for a moment under the burden, then turned 
toward the unpromising future. In the fullness of the mis- 
ery the Southern saloon began its hellish work by preying 
upon the weaknesses of the Southern negro, hitherto the 
burden-bearer of the South, the slave of toil, but now a free 
man; and, rejoicing in the glory of his long-sought free- 
dom and armed with the power of manhood suffrage, he 
was pursuaded away from the farmis into the villages and 
towns to rejoice in the paradise of his privileged idleness, 
to become the plastic subject in the hands of the political 
ward boss, by which the saloon sought to gain control of 
all power dependent upon the ballot box. 

Justice to the agricultural interests demanded heroic 
action on the part of the farmer against the treatment of 
the sajoon towards him. From that time on a conflict has 
waged between these interests. Fierce has been the fight 
upon many a battlefield, and often have the faithful sons of 
toil cried: "Watchman, what of the night?" At the break- 
ing of the day victory perched upon the banners of the 
faithful, who still remembered the struggles of the fathers 
for the freedom of American manhood. But through it all 
the Southern saloon has been sitting, hovering over idle- 



130 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

ness and vicious propensities, akin to anarchy, and hatch- 
ing out its recruits from the criminal classes, such as ate 
at the very heart of our institutions, strove against the se- 
curity of our homes, retarded our prosperity, polluted the 
purity of our jury system, and overthrew the sacredness 
of the ballot box. 

Through the saloon influence at elections and in the leg- 
islative assemblies of the South political conditions became 
unbearable. From the municipal council up, it sought to 
control every legislative body. It sought to dictate laws 
to suit its damnable purposes. It turned faithful public 
servants out of office and seated, by insurrectionary meth- 
ods, the foulest and most corrupt men in places of power. 
It tampered with the election laws of nearly every South- 
ern state. It sought to vest in its coterie the power and 
authority to bring up returns as it chose. It brought upon 
us periods of election stealing such as honest men never 
dreamed of. It commonly resorted to bribery, prostitution 
and intimidation as its means of gaining political power. 
It sought to debauch our manhood suffrage in every con- 
ceivable way. Its shameless course of evil it pursued until 
despondency almost crushed the hope of liberty. Reform 
it derided. Decent men it put to shame. It drove into 
exile all who dared challenge its oppressive methods. And 
when confronted with its deeds of infamy the authors 
defiantly asked: "What are you going to do about it?" For 
the right of law enforcement it withheld and, wherever 
possible, it fastened its gory clutches upon the throat of 
prosecution and besmirched the robes of the judiciary. 

Under these conditions it may well be imagined how 
shockingly monstrous the saloon influence was upon the 
morals of the country; for no political evil can become 
great until it has woven itself into the web and woof of 
ethical conscience and seared the soul to an insensibility 
of its depredations. And with what delight it trampled 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 131 

upon and spoiled virtue and purity. It invaded the family 
circle and broke asunder the dearest ties that heaven ever 
welded. It delighted in robbing wife of husband and chil- 
dren of father. It thrust its slimy hand into the pantry 
shelf and took away the crust from the little hungry ones. 
The wail of the children touched not its frozen heart. 
Mercy's voice it drowned in the din of its carousal. It 
stalked abroad over the land and incited men to deeds of 
infamy and crime. It glutted the prison houses. It 
crowded the asylums. It filled the potter's field with pau- 
per graves. It soaked the southern sands with more 
human blood than ever flowed on a southern battlefield. In 
every village it left its pitiable specimens of dethroned 
human reason, and of defaced and deformed manhood, 
cursed by its blighting power. Its religion was greed. Its 
love was lust. It knew no pity. Its patriotism was rule 
and ruin. 

It has ever been with nations and with men that sinful 
indulgences have their boundaries, transgression beyond 
which brings on destruction. In the early hours of man's 
history we discover the marks of man's weaknesses in- 
variably followed by the penalties of law. God Himself 
dealt with transgressors. Adam sinned and was driven 
from Eden. Cain was branded for the murder of his broth- 
er. In the divine order the sequence of sin is death. 
Calamity is the legal penalty for the business that is 
founded upon injustice to humanity. The day of doom does 
not tarry till eternity. So in the South the havoc wrought 
to the saloon business is in, accord with thte heavenly proc- 
lamation, "The soul that sinneth it shall die." The saloon 
has sinned away its right of existence there. The day of 
judgment has come. In nearly every Southern state bat- 
tles fierce as war are being waged on the liquor traffic. At 
every point there is conflict. In every election this ques- 
tion is being fought out, for the hold of the Southern saloon 



132 WINONA TEiMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

is fastened deep upon public affairs. Its influence is deep- 
rooted in every political organization. Its corrupting power 
has been of such long duration that it is broken only by the 
strongest opposition united for that single purpose. Suc- 
cess is wrought through bitterest conflict. But wherever 
the shout of triumph has been raised there has been for- 
ever established an unanswerable argument for the exten- 
sion of the battle lines. The results in every village, town, 
and city that has gone dry have marked a phenomenal 
achievement for home, for religion, and for schools, as 
well as for the elevation of the morals of all classes. 
North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, led the way, 
but Kentucky, Tennessee, South/ Carolina, Florida, Louisi- 
ana and Texas are not far behind. 

In Tennessee we have won victories in all but four of 
her ninety-six counties, and the next general assembly will 
put the saloons out of these and enact state-wide prohibi- 
tion. The saloon record in that state has been such as to 
arouse her best men to action. Not under the frenzy of 
irate passion, but in the cool deliberation of their better 
judgment they have pursued the fight for the best interest 
of business, for home and for the good of all the people. 
The salutary results of abolishing saloons are our best 
arguments for our action. 

We began with the original "four-mile law" in 1877 pro- 
hibiting the sale of intoxicating liquors within four miles 
of an incorporated institution of learning. Years after- 
wards this law was changed so as to apply to all schools, 
except in incorporated cities and towns. This, then, was 
amended to apply to all towns thereafter incorporated, hav- 
ing a population of two thousand or under, and was finally 
extended to the whole state. At the beginning of these en- 
actments we had saloons in every county of the state, and 
schools in only twenty-nine counties. We had then a pop- 
ulation of 930,000, with 139,000 children of school age who 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 133 

could neither read nor write. We had 3,070 white schools, 
running seventy-one days of the year, with an average 
daily attendance of only 125,000. We had 3,396 teachers 
and 3,000 school houses worth $1,000,000. But today, after 
having run the saloons out of all but four counties, we have 
run schools into all the counties and into every civil dis- 
trict of Tennessee. Today we have 6,000 white schools, 
with an average daily attendance of 380,000, employing 
8,000 teachers, 120 days in the year, with 7,000 school 
houses worth $6,000,000. Not a single school has been 
closed a single day because saloons went out. The fact is 
we have fought the saloons of Tennessee with the free 
schools, and as the former have depreciated the latter have 
thrived, and thousands of poor boys out on the mountain 
sides and in the valleys of Tennessee, who were hereto- 
fore tortured by the strangling grip of liquor upon drunken 
fathers, are now afforded the long-sought opportunity of 
relieving their destitute condition and of seeing the lamp of 
civilization beam radiantly upon their benighted hopes. 
How can there be any question of more vital importance 
to a state than the enlightenment of its citizenship. Free 
government is based upon the intelligence of its men. 
And instead of allowing influences to keep them in poverty 
and ignorance, it behooves the state to champion the cause 
of liberty, and to abolish Satan's factories of crime and 
free the manhood by a knowledge of the truth. 

Tennessee has 1,350 convicts in her penitentiary and 851 
of these were sent from the counties where liquor was sold. 

Tennessee pays in criminal costs to the wet counties at 
the rate of 12.9 cents per capita, while to her dry counties 
she pays only 5.8 cents per capita. 

Shelby county, the "wettest" in the state, pays criminal 
costs and workhouse expenses at the rate of 77.2 cents per 
capita, and has furnished through her courts 6,000 divorces 
in the last ten years. 



134 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

Greene county is dry and with a population of 30,596 she 
-pays in criminal costs only the sum of $549.23 per annum, 
while Campbell county, with her saloons, having a popula- 
tion of only 17,317 pays $3,863.56 criminal costs per annum. 

In four months, under prohibition in Knoxville, a city of 
65,000 people, the murder record was reduced by 75 per 
cent., and all felonies decreased 32 per cent. At the July 
term, 1907, with saloons, there were 130 indictments for 
felonies found by the grand jury of Knox county, and eight 
of these were for murder; while at the March term, 1908, 
after saloons went out, there were only seventy-six in- 
dictments for felonies, and only two of these for murder. 
At the July term, 1907, there were eighty-five indictments 
for larceny, while at the March term, 1908, there were only 
forty-one such indictments. At the former term there 
were seventeen indictments for felonious assault, while at 
the latter there were only seven such indictments. In 
1907 the city council of Knoxville had only $63,000 to ap- 
propriate for school, while in 1908 there was appropriated 
$106,000 for schools. 

What stronger reasons could the South have for its 
attitude when the figures speak with such powerful weight? 
If the South loves her manhood; if she seeks to promote 
peace on earth and good will toward men, why should she 
not come out for the right and do the noblest part by her 
citizenship? 

The issue in the warfare the South is waging is the 
welfare of society, the preservation of its manhood, the 
prosperity of its commerce, the solution of its race prob- 
lem, the release of the southern negro from his second and 
worst bondage, and the establishment of his rights of citi- 
zenship under the constitution and under a standard of 
morality and intelligence worthy the name, it is the break- 
ing of a stagnation that has bred infinite crime, the pres- 
ervation of wealth, the promotion of learning, it is joy in 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 135 

the stead of sorrow, it is law against license, order against 
chaos, virtue against vice, manhood against meanness, 
plenty against want, life against death, and G-od against 
mammon. 

The revolution has come. The tide has turned. Pen- 
ance offered by promise to obey law has come too late. 
The crucial test is whether righteousness shall prevail, 
whether government shall stand against crime, whether 
mercy's voice coming from the homes of the oppressed 
shall once more appeal to the consciences of men. These 
are the questions. And the Southern saloon is reeling be- 
fore the iron fact that its day of doom has come. 

And now we are ushering in the New South. Old things 
have passed away, and the glory of the present achieve- 
ments redeems our land and obliterates the stigma of its 
rebellion. The South is setting the pattern of patriotic de- 
votion to which the nation will measure up, and by and by 
when we shall have risen to the full dignity of a purified 
manhood, when we shall have driven out the saloon evils 
from our borders, God will call a concourse of the angels 
and from them select the best writer to pen in letters of 
gold upon the new white page, "The South Redeemed." 



CANADA'S FIGHT AGAINST THE 
LIQUOR EVIL 



By Controller F. S. Spence, Toronto, Ont. 

The story of the fight against the liquor power is the 
same in Canada as it is in the United States, and as it is 
throughout all Christendom. It is a story of stern effort 
and steady progress, to which there 
can be only one result. The temper- 
ance cause is winning; the temper- 
ance cause will win. Lack of confi- 
dence in this certainty is the result of 
a failure to understand the nature of 
the movement. That movement is not 
a mere human invention or fad, created 
by some novelty- seeking cranks. It is 
the inevitable result of great universal 
conditions and forces. Wherever you 
find an evil of any kind, something 
that curses and hurts humanity, and into contact with that 
evil you bring men and women of Christian character, un- 
selfish thought, and earnest purpose, there you have the 
elements of a moral reform. That reform will spring from 
those conditions, and will inevitably and irresistibly go on, 
uniil either the moral purpose dies out, or the evil is over- 
thrown. 

That was the origin of this great reform — the awful 
curse of intemperance and the God-given desire to be rid 
of it. Therefore if you could wipe the whole movement 
out of existence, all its literature, its agencies, its methods 

137 




138 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

and forms, but leave the curse and the God-inspired pur- 
pose, y.ou would have the whole history over again. Pro^ 
gressing through all the stages it has passed that move- 
ment would come to exactly the position in which it stands 
today, and would go on to the future victory that lies 
ahead, and we trust not very far away. 

Just as surely as tomorrow will follow today, so surely 
will the suppression of the liquor traffic follow the unholy 
system of encouraging, of protecting and licensing that 
traffic, by so-called — and shamefully miscalled — Christian 
legislation. 

The progress of this great reform has been almost un- 
paralleled in the world's history. Even the supreme re- 
form of Christianity did not make, in the same period of 
time, as much advance as the temperance cause has made. 
Think of the fact that one hundred years ago today there 
did not exist a temperance society, as we understand the 
term. Uncensured and uncriticised, the liquor traffic was 
dominant everywhere. Drunkenness was so common as to 
call forth little comment, and to involve practically no dis- 
grace. Incredible vice and degradation prevailed. The 
idea of legislating to remedy the curse had no advocates. 
Look at our position now. Every church inculcates tem- 
perance. Every corner of Christendom has its temperance 
society. Inebriety is a disgrace, and is looked upon as a 
disqualification in any applicant for employment, or any 
candidate for public position or favor. The statute books 
of every civilized nation are filled with laws for the regula- 
tion of the traffic, and for the restraint and punishment of 
the vice. Today there are, living under prohibitory laws, 
more people than were in the whole British Empire when 
the temperance movement was inaugurated. 

No one claims that this progress has been unvarying or 
unmarked by defects and weaknesses. Although it is 
God's cause and therefore certain to triumph, it is pro- 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 139 

moted and carried on by human instrumentalities; there- 
fore mistakes will certainly occur, but these are not always 
disasters. Men learn by blundering. Up the ladder of 
failure they climb to the platform of success. To a certain 
extent, we are wise today because of our ignorance of yes- 
terday. We were guilty of folly which brought its own 
penalties, from which we gathered knowledge. This is the 
experience of every man, every movement, every com- 
munity. Every institution and appliance of our modern 
civilization has come from some experiment that resulted 
in failure, out of which grew knowledge, that led to 
•success. 

The temperance movement is no exception. Earnest 
men who never dreamed of total abstinence, deplored the 
evils of drunkenness, and set out to remedy them by advo- 
cating a moderate use of intoxicating liquors. To their 
minds, drunkenness was the evil with which they had to 
deal. It did not cross their minds that there was anything 
wrong in drinking. More is known today of the nature and 
effects of alcoholic liquors. We have learned that lives 
may be shortened, health impaired, money wasted, moral 
character lowered, by the drinking of men who are never 
seen drunk. 

The early temperance reformers started out to remedy 
the evil of drunkenness by promoting what they considered 
to be wise kinds of drinking. Sometimes they tried pledges 
against anything but moderate indulgence in intoxicants. 
Sometimes they tried abstinence from ardent spirits and 
encouragement of lighter beverages. They failed, but in 
their efforts they learned that drunkenness grew out of 
liquor drinking, and that if lager beer and light wines 
were tolerated, the worst forms of drink would be sold 
under false names. 

Driven by the logic of the facts that they could not 
ignore, they boldly struck all permissions out of their 



140 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSED 

pledges, and came up to the position of total abstinence, 
in which all consistent, well-informed temperance men 
stand today. 

When this point was reached, they thought that they had 
solved the problem, but they found themselves still facing 
failure. The evil they opposed had a twofold character; it 
was popular and legal. Wrong customs and ideas can only 
be met by moral suasion and total abstinence practice. 
The law protecting the liquor traffic can only be opposed 
by political action. The law sanctioned temptations which 
lured the reformed drunkard back to the abyss from which 
he had been rescued. Legalization of liquor selling trained 
the youth to believe that alcoholic indulgence was proper 
and safe. Driven again by stern necessity, the temperance 
reformers broadened their plans, enlarged their program, 
and hoisted the battle flag of "total abstinence for the' indi- 
vidual, and total prohibition for the community." 

That flag floats over the fighting line today. We are told 
to remedy intemperance by moral suasion. What use is 
moral suasion, while the forces of law and government 
are arrayed in defense of the liquor evil? 'Some people be- 
lieve that prohibitory legislation alone will be effective. 
This is another blunder. Prohibitory law is the embodi- 
ment of public opinion, without which such law cannot be 
secured, and would not be of any value if secured. Law is 
the machinery that, operated and wisely guided, will ac- 
complish results. Public opinion is the motive power that 
drives the machinery. Without both, success is impossible. 

Further experience has taught us that the law, the effec- 
tive machinery, impelled by public opinion, the motive 
power, must be wisely and honestly directed, if good work 
is to be done. We have seen prohibitory laws backed by 
strong expressions of popular sentiment, administered by 
unsympathetic or dishonest officials, and again we have 
had to acknowledge failure because of human weakness 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 141 

and lack of previous knowledge to guide preparation for 
the emergency. 

Thus after years of study, experience, failure, knowledge, 
success, we stand today in a position logically and prac- 
tically far ahead of any we occupied before. We know that 
to win in this great struggle, we must have, firstly, sound 
sentiment in the community; secondly, wise laws on the 
statute hooks; thirdly, honest administration of the law 
when it is enacted. When these three essentials are se- 
cured, the temperance reform will be a success. It never 
will be while any of them is lacking. 

Experience has burned these facts into the hearts and 
brains of Canadian temperance reformers, who, although 
often thwarted and delayed, are striving today with vary- 
ing success to overthrow the liquor power, by bringing into 
the field against it, these allied forces of public opinion, 
legislation, and honest administration. 

It is possible that certain special features of Canada's 
political system give her temperance reformers a slight 
advantage over their co-workers in the United States — in 
the matter of law enforcement. Their form of government 
is partly based upon English methods and principles that 
are the outcome of centuries of experience and develop- 
ment, and partly on the democratic ideas which are the 
basis of the United States constitution and laws. British 
precedents have been followed in administrative methods, 
and democratic ideas have been applied in the formulation 
of legislative purposes. For example, the legislature of the 
province of Ontario has declared that by public voting a 
local municipality may prohibit the retail selling of liquor, 
but the same legislature would refuse to allow local public 
opinion to decide how, or how far, the will of the people, 
as embodied in the law, shall be carried out. 

The votes of electors in a locality cannot affect the posi- 
tion of any officer charged with the execution of the law in 



142 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

that locality. That officer is responsible only to the pro- 
vincial government, which in turn is continuously and di- 
rectly responsible to the legislative body representing the 
whole province. An officer need not fear the hostility of 
any lawless local element. His position depends not on 
popular favor, but upon honest discharge of his duty. All 
men are imperfect, all laws are defective, all administra- 
tive methods fall short of being ideal, but it is not going 
too far to say that the Canadian system in its working out, 
secures an approximation to the best possible results. 

Let us take a look at what has been accomplished in 
the way of driving the liquor traffic out of large areas, 
and in keeping down the consumption of intoxicating 
liquors. Last year our per capita consumption of all forms 
of strong drink was six gallons. As you know, the con- 
sumption in the United States was over twenty gallons per 
capita. In Great Britain the consumption was in the 
neighborhood of six gallons per capita. Canada drinks less 
than one-third of the amount drunk by the next soberest 
country, and about one-sixth of the average amount 
drunk by old-world countries. The area in which liquor 
selling is unlawful is rapidly increasing, through the appli- 
cation of the local option principle. 

There are ten provinces in the Dominion of Canada. 
Pour of these lie west of the great lakes, and are newly 
settled. They have a great extensive territory, rich in 
natural resources, but are sparsely populated. They are 
filling up, however, with good material, progressive and in- 
telligent farmers from the western part of the United 
States, and the more enterprising and aggressive of our 
young people from eastern Canada. They are laying the 
political foundations of great commonwealths yet to be, 
and they are putting into their provincial statutes, provi- 
sions giving the electors power to prevent the liquor traffic 
from obtaining any strong position in the new land. 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 143 

We can judge better the work that has been done, and 
the prospects of the future, by a glance at the record made 
in the older, wealthier, eastern provinces, with their five 
million population. 

Beginning at the extreme east, we find that in the prov- 
ince of Nova Scotia, under the different forms of local op- 
tion, the legalized liquor traffic is confined with very nar- 
row limits. There are eighteen counties in the province, 
and in only two of them are licenses issued. West of Nova 
Scotia is New Brunswick, which has prohibition in nine out 
of fourteen counties. Prince Edward Island has enacted a 
provincial prohibitory law, and there is no licensed selling 
of intoxicating beverages in any part of the land. Further 
west is the French Canadian province of Quebec, where the 
parish is the local self-governing unit, there are 965 
the other 570 are under prohibitory ordinances, 
parishes in the province. Licenses are issued in 395, and 

Next in order comes Ontario, with many large cities and 
towns, including 790 municipalities of different grades; 317 
of these are under prohibition, and 473 are under license. 
These results are obtained by various methods, sometimes 
by petitions to the licensing authorities, but generally by 
the exercise of local voting powers, granted by the legisla- 
ture of each province. It is only a few years since there 
were 6,185 licenses in the province of Ontario. Now there 
are less than 2,500, although the population is about two 
millions. 

Prohibitory powers conferred upon all localities, by the 
provincial licensing statutes in most of the provinces, im- 
pose upon the liquor traffic rigid restrictions such as are 
becoming common to different countries. For example, in 
Ontario no liquor may be sold between 7 o'clock on any 
Saturday night and 6 o'clock on the following Monday 
morning. Nor may there be any sale on any part of any 
day on which any public voting takes place. Nor is sale 



144 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

permitted to any person under twenty-one years of age, nor 
to inebriates or Indians, nor within a specified distance of 
public works or exhibition ground, or school or church. 

These restrictions are fairly well enforced, and though 
they present a good deal of inconsistency in theory, they 
are useful in the development and strengthening of public 
opinion in relation to the dangerous character of the drink 
traffic. 

What of the future? It is bright. We began long ago 
with heavy odds against us, and with little encouragement 
or support. Temperance sentiment was weak, the churches 
were indifferent, the liquor traffic was powerful. In spite 
of all this, we have won up to a position in which our 
cause is strong, respected and successful. You know the 
attitude of public opinion towards drink practices in this 
country- It is the same in Canada. Practically every 
church inculcates temperance, every public school is called 
upon to teach the dangers of alcoholic indulgence. Tem- 
perance societies are everywhere. Laws against the liquor 
traffic make up a large part of our statutes. 

If such results have been attained in the face of tremen- 
dous opposition, with agencies that were few and feeble, 
what may, we not hope to accomplish during the next 
decade with all the allied influences that now unite to assist 
us. There can be only one result. The ruin-working sys- 
tem of legalized drunkard-making will be utterly destroyed. 

When that time comes, Canada will owe to the United 
States a debt of gratitude even heavier than that which 
she has already incurred. These two great nations, grow- 
ing up side by side, ought to be mutually helpful, and the 
more so, because of their differences of method, and their 
independence of each other. Canada is better off because 
of the United States. To your enterprising example, your 
genius for government, your skill in adapting means to 
ends, we owe a good deal of what we have been able to ac- 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 145 

complish. No doubt we have also learned from your po- 
litical mistakes, as you will have an opportunity to do from 
ours. 

May this useful reciprocity long continue. Co-operation 
in work for the uplifting of humanity is as much of union 
as we need desire, and allow me to add that even co-citi- 
zenship could not raise your great nation any higher than 
it already stands in the admiration and esteem of intelli- 
gent Canadians. 

As was stated on this platform last night, the mighty 
power of accumulating public opinion will, ere long, be 
able to block the wheels of any juggernaut that would 
crush and destroy our weaker fellow beings. Every day 
that sound sentiment grows stronger, and because every 
word heard or spoken, every exchange of knowledge or 
counsel, and every inspiring greeting from co-workers, 
helps to swell its volume and power, I am thankful for the 
privilege of meeting you here today. 



THE WORLD MOVES ON 



By Prof. Charles Scanlon, Pittsburg, Pa. 

Great truths have always dawned slowly, and the more 
profound and important those truths are, the longer the 
human race seems to have been in comprehending and 
applying them. How long it took us 
to see that slavery was wrong, that 
we owe the gospel to the heathen, 
that woman is the child of God and 
not the slave of man, that duty is pos- 
sible, that sacrifice is sweet, that life 
is sacred, that ability is a trust, and 
that God loves the whole human race! 
Just now we are beginning to see with 
increased clearness of vision that the 
liquor traffic is an unnecessary evil 
and an unmitigated curse, and not- 
withstanding the centuries of struggle with this sin, we 
shall win in the fight. I believe this, because the trend of 
humanity is upward. Corruption abounds, fraud exists, 
there is venality in the land, vice is openly practiced and 
secretly reveled in, intemperance is doing incalculable evil, 
the Sabbath is widely desecrated and profaned, unlawful 
monoplies frown and glare upon us, the press, not all of it, 
for there are honorable exceptions, but too much of it, by 
its unscrupulous use for party purposes without regard to 
principle or honor, and by its prurient details of unclean- 
ness and sin, becomes the very propagator of evil instead 
of the ally of virtue, condemning vice and crime. All of this 

147 




148 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

is true and much more. But when was there an age which 
can show a record in every way more favorable than the 
present? Sin does abound, and it has almost from the be- 
ginning of the race, but we regard and treat it as sin today 
and that was not always the case. 

Historians have pointed out eight golden ages in the his- 
tory of men: There was Palestine under Solomon, Egypt 
under the Ptolomies, Rome under Augustus, Athens under 
Pericles, Italy under Leo X, Russia under John IV., France 
under Louis XIV., and England under Elizabeth: — all great 
and glorious ages as the world counts greatness and glory, 
and yet it seems to me there was never a time when the 
race was so much under the dominion of love as at the 
present day. Think what is being done in education for 
both sexes and all races! Refreshing streams of knowl- 
edge flowing broadcast through the deserts of ignorance 
and sin; science unlocking the secrets of the earth and the 
air and the sea, making the illimitable agencies of nature 
perform much of the drudgery of life and setting the 
hands and minds of men free to develop their nobler possi- 
bilities; religion has been refined and purified, and the 
human mind, searching for truth, has risen above supersti- 
tion and cant, and "taking knowledge for its guide, has 
made faith the product of an enlightened reason and a 
divine revelation. In the light of all this, only blind unbe- 
lief, it seems to me, can regard any sin as irremovable, how- 
ever strongly intrenched it may be. Of the nine great his- 
toric evils, all but three — war, intemperance and impurity 
— have been legally abolished, and these three in God's 
good time must go the way the other six have gone. 

If asked what these observations have to do with the 
temperance reform, the reply is, since we have overcome 
so many difficulties and obstacles, it is impossible that 
strong drink, the special enemy of the Anglo-Saxon race, 
can not be conquered. It can be and it will be, for the 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 149 

word of God has promised it. The promise is that the 
kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our 
Lord and of His Christ; and that will never he while the 
liquor traffic is a legalized institution with the consent, or 
with the acquiescence, of Christian people. The promise is 
that God's will shall he done upon earth as it is done in 
Heaven, and that never can be while nominally Christian 
people rent property for saloon purposes, or sign saloon 
petitions, or go on saloon bonds, or vote for saloon license, 
or in any other manner countenance, sanction or tolerate 
this iniquitous institution. 

I attended a meeting in the central west where the chair- 
man opened the discussion by saying that he was opposed 
to the very principle of prohibition, that the Ten Command- 
ments were not prohibitions, and proceeded for twenty 
minutes to argue that question, and it would take at least 
twenty minutes to prove that the Ten Commandments are 
not prohibitions. Another said that he did not object to the 
principle, but that he thought the thing itself was imprac- 
ticable and, furthermore, that it was not the use of the 
liquor which did the harm, but the abuse of it, and that a 
man might drink too much tea or coffee or milk, or eat too 
much cheese. I arose then and there and said: "Yes, sir; 
and when I see a man in the street cursing his wife and 
abusing and neglecting his children and making a brute of 
himself, and I inquire what is the matter with him, and am 
told that he has eaten too much cheese, I shall insist that 
he be given no more cheese. How many men have ever 
gone to the gallows as a result of eating cheese? How 
many are in the penitentiary or the insane asylum or the 
poor house from eating cheese ? How many children are in 
orphanages or homes for feeble minded or are afraid of 
their fathers, because the fathers eat cheese? Suppose I 
came into your home community and said that I was mod- 
erately impure, moderately untruthful, that I stole moder- 



150 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

ately, whipped my wife moderately, or starved my children 
moderately? Every one perfectly well understands today 
that temperance is the moderate use of good things and 
total abstinence in the use of harmful things, and the use 
of liquor is a harmful thing, and whether it is much or 
little, the difference is quantitative and not qualitative. 

The use of strong drink, even in moderation, is a slippery 
path which leads to a precipice; it is the gate through 
which every poor wretch who ever died of strong drink has 
gone on his way from a strong life to a drunkard's doom. 
Not one of all the unnumbered host whose graves scar the 
bosom of the earth and whose souls have gone unshriven 
into the presence of their Maker, intended to do so when 
they began as moderate drinkers. 

Nor must any one imagine, because he is intelligent and 
respectable and has a pleasant home and a happy family 
and a good position, that he can tamper with this evil and 
not suffer the possible consequences. The pangs of the 
palace are as real and as numerous as the woes of the 
wigwam, and liquor sipped from golden goblets held in 
jeweled hands will debase and debauch as certainly and as 
swiftly as if taken from the rudest vessel in the filthiest 
by-lane. Not where you get it, nor how you get it, nor 
from where you get it, but simply that you get it, is the 
dangerous thing. There is only one infallible guarantee 
that one may not become a slave to his appetite for this 
drug, and that is to let it absolutely alone always and 
everywhere. 

A further sign of progress is seen in the changed stand- 
ards of society. Some of you may remember very well 
when it was a usual thing for a pastor in his common 
rounds of visitation to be offered strong drink in the 
homes, and he took it, too. At church dedications and 
the installation or the ordination of ministers, it was not 
uncommon for those in attendance to drink to excess. Rev. 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 151 

Dr. Theodore L. Cuyler, the friend of all good men and 
causes, says that, so long as a demijohn was kept in the 
pulpit, some of the contents was hound to trickle out into 
the pews. We thank God that we have gotten the demi- 
johns out of the most of the pulpits in this country. 

I visited a church in New Jersey, where the pastor told 
me that, years ago when the church was small and strug- 
gling (it is large and wealthy now) some of the members 
had a boat to ply between this country and the West 
Indies, carrying thereto dry goods and notions, and bring- 
ing back rum, which they sold for the benefit of the church, 
and there is a minute on the church records to this day 
commending those men for their piety and zeal in "spir- 
itual" things. It would have been more appropriate had 
they said "spiritous" things, but they did not word it that 
way. Were they bad men? In all probability, they were 
good men — that was the standard of the time. I stood on 
the hillside at old Valley Forge, where Washington knelt 
in the snow and prayed to the god of battles to be with him 
in the Revolutionary conflict; and yet, at the time that he 
was kneeling there, he held slaves, sipped liquor, and is 
said to have taken part in lotteries. Was George Washing- 
ton a bad man? No. He was as good as he was great, and 
as great as he was good. That was simply the standard 
of the time. Our foreparents kept liquor in the home, and 
•served it to guests who came, as an act of hospitality, and 
this was done by godly men and women. We have fortu- 
nately outgrown that standard now, and, against the voice 
of science, the testimony of history, and the promptings 
of conscience, no one can innocently do such a thing today. 

Education is also with us in this holy warfare. Thanks 
to Mrs. Mary H. Hunt and her sisters of the White Ribbon 
Army, by the authority and the mandate of law the evil 
effects of strong drink are taught to every child in the pub- 
lic schools of this country. W T e may say it is poorly done 



152 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

or evaded, or that its influence is counteracted in the home. 
This is no doubt the case in many instances, but it is 
grandly true that four hundred seventy thousand school 
teachers can not teach the evil effects of strong drink to 
twenty-odd millions of school children, year after year, and 
it not bear blessed fruit in time that is to come; it will do 
it, and is already doing it. 

Medical science is also with us in this struggle, and has 
shown these four things to be true: First, that alcohol is 
not a food, save for the jails and penitentiaries and prisons 
and asylums and almshouses and orphanages, etc.; sec- 
ond, that it does not warm the body, nor sustain it in wear- 
iness; third, that it is not a true stimulant — that is, it gives 
no strength — but is an irritant, narcotic poison, or in other 
words, a depressant; fourth, that it is not necessary as a 
medicine, because there are better substitutes. I have 
only time to speak briefly to these last two points. 

That it is not a food is shown by the fact that, while it 
may be absorbed, it is never digested or assimilated, and 
therefore cannot contribute to the support of the body. 
That it does not afford protection against the extremes of 
heat or cold is shown by the testimony of Lord Roberts in 
Egypt and in Africa, by Generals Miles and Wheeler and 
Shatter in their Cuban and Porto Rican campaigns; and by 
Greeley and Nansen and Perry in their northern expedi- 
tions, as well as by the demonstrations of science. That it 
is not a true stimulant is manifest from the depressing in- 
fluence which it has upon the senses and the judgment, 
causing men to injure themselves without knowing it, or 
to talk of sacred matters in a most vulgar manner. If a 
stimulant is needed in the crisis of disease, the best author- 
ities say that warm milk, hot water, tea, coffee;, beef tea, 
carbonate of ammonia, or a score of other things are bet- 
ter substitutes. It is a depressant, and not a true stim- 
ulant. 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 153 

The late Dr. N. S. Davis, of Chicago, popularly known as 
the "Father of the American Medical Association," a man 
upon whom many professional honors were bestowed, and 
who for more than fifty years was at the head of Mercy 
Hospital in Chicago, said that for more than forty years of 
the latter part of his life he never used, or allowed to be 
used, alcohol in any form or in any quantity for any pa- 
tient who came under his care, and furthermore that he 
believed there was no disease, ailment or accident to which 
the human body was heir for which it was necessary, there 
being better substitutes. Note carefully that he did not 
say that it was always useless, but he did say that it was 
dangerous and unnecessary. In this opinion he had the 
support of many eminent men whose opinions justly com- 
mand respect. 

When asked why, this being the case, local physicians so 
commonly prescribe alcohol, Dr. Davis replied, in sub- 
stance, that it was due to traditional education, conven- 
ience of access, and a disinclination to cease its use while 
popular opinion sanctioned it. 

I have no doubt that he gave the correct answer to that 
question. The Red Cross Hospital in New York uses no 
alcohol, externally or internally, for any purpose whatever. 
The Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan uses none; the 
London Temperance Hospital and the Frances Willard 
Hospital use none. Doctors go on prescribing it and peo- 
ple go on using it, just as they use the patent medicine nos- 
trums which are foisted upon the public and which contain 
a large per cent, of alcohol, such as Peruna, Hostetter's 
Stomach Bitters, Paine's Celery Compound, Burdock Blood 
Bitters, Colton's Bitters, Porter's Stomach Bitters, War- 
ner's Safe Tonic Bitters, Hood's Sarsaparilla, Lydia Pink- 
ham's Vegetable Compound, Swamp Root, etc. To all good 
wives and mothers, or any who have the care of a home 
and a family, I say let these nostrums alone. If there is 



154 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

anything the matter with you or the family, have a repu- 
table physician to prescribe; and, if there is nothing the 
matter, why waste your money and injure your health in 
taking these nostrums? 

Life insurance companies have found that total abstain- 
ers are from thirty to forty per cent, better risk than mod- 
erate drinkers. Or that they live from five to seven years 
longer. Approximately one and one-half millions of men 
are employed on the railroads of the United States, and of 
this number ninety per cent, are prohibited from drinking 
liquor either while on or off duty. Trust companies refuse 
to become surety for men who are addicted to strong drink. 
Few great commercial or business concerns but that dis- 
criminate against men who use strong drink. 

Numerous organizations are working actively for the 
overthrow of the liquor traffic. We have the Loyal Tem- 
perance Legion, the Juvenile Templars, the Sons of Tem- 
perance, the Good Templars, the National Temperance So- 
ciety, the International Reform Bureau, the Anti-Saloon 
League, the Prohibition party, which has stood like the 
rock of Gibraltar for more than a generation; the W. C. T. 
U., with a quarter of a million of as good women as can 
be found in the world; and if this splendid organization 
had not done anything else, it has helped to keep the tem- 
perance question before the people of the nation, and that 
is worthy in itself and of its history, which is saying a 
good deal. 

Now the great denominations are swinging into line. 
The Presbyterian church led the way by the appointment 
of a committee in 1811 to co-operate with similar commit- 
tees from other churches to stay the tide of intemperance. 
In 1881 the Presbyterians made this committee a permanent 
part of its regular organization, thus placing the temperance 
reform on a parity with missions and other enterprises of 
the church. In 1904 the Presbyterian church began appoint- 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 155 

ing field secretaries whose salary and expenses were paid 
by the church and who were authorized to propagate this 
reform in the name of and with the authority of the church. 
This denomination now has five representatives in the field 
besides an office force. It distributes millions of pages of 
literature each year, in several languages, furnishes pledge 
cards, programs and other literature, besides publishing a 
paper which is the official organ of the denomination. 

Other denominations which have similar committees are: 
The Methodist Episcopal, Methodist Protestant, United 
Presbyterian, Reformed Presbyterian, United. Evangelical, 
United Brethren, Congregational, Orthodox Quakers, Hick- 
site Quakers, General Synod of the Lutheran church, Bap- 
tists of North America, Disciples of Christ, Unitarian, 
Protestant Episcopal, Roman Catholic, while some of the 
smaller bodies such as Wesleyan Methodist, are temper- 
ance societies as well as churches. 

These various church committees have organized them- 
selves into the Inter-Church Temperance Counsel, which 
will hold its second session in New York City in Decem- 
ber, 1908. 

If asked what these various organizations have accom- 
plished, the answer is they have already freed one-half of 
the United States from the licensed liquor traffic, and en- 
abled forty millions of our people to live in territory where 
the liquor traffic is an outlaw. 

But to generalize. If I have rightly read history there 
are four stages in every great reform: First, when it is 
ignored and despised by all save a few; second, when it is 
denounced as being false in theory and pernicious if put 
into practice; third, when it is admitted to be theoretically 
right, but claimed to be impracticable in execution; fourth, 
and finally, when it is accepted, adopted and applied. We 
have clearly gained three of these stages in the temperance 
reform. 



156 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

That it is no longer ignored or despised must be appar- 
ent to all, for there is not a village or hamlet, city or town, 
hovel or home where there is not a deepening conviction 
that this guilty traffic ought to die. From Maine to Cali- 
fornia, from the lakes to the gulf, how to curtail and finally 
destroy the liquor traffic is the problem of the hour. The 
day has surely come in this reform when not only individ- 
uals but organizations must push forward, step aside or 
be run over. 

We have likewise passed the second stage; the reform is 
no longer denounced as false in theory and pernicious if 
put into practice. Whatever may be a man's personal hab- 
its or his political complexion, if he is intelligent and 
honest, he will admit that the liquor traffic is a bad thing. 
Other things being equal, a sober carpenter is a better work- 
man and a better citizen than a drunken carpenter. The 
same is true of the shoemaker, the blacksmith, the butcher, 
the baker, the farmer, the merchant, the lawyer, the doc- 
tor and the teacher; some are even intimating now that a 
sober preacher is actually better than a drunken preacher. 

But if it is wrong for the preacher to drink it is not right 
for his people to drink. If it is wrong for both the preach- 
er and the people to drink, it is not right for either the 
preacher or the people to vote for a man to sell stuff which 
it is bad to drink. If it is a bad thing to be a drunkard, it 
is not a good thing to license men to make drunkards. If it 
is such a bad thing to sell liquor that the man who does it 
can not belong to the same church with you, it is not a 
good thing for you to vote for him to do a bad thing. 

The point I am trying to make is this, that the liquor 
dealer is not alone or even chiefly responsible for the liquor 
traffic. "Under the old Justinian code, and in all of our own 
courts of common justice today, he who harbors a criminal 
is himself guilty of crime. Mrs. Serratt had no active part 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 157 

in the murder of Abraham Lincoln, but she harbored the 
criminal. 

Do any of you so exercise the right of suffrage as to 
harbor a liquor criminal? Somebody is responsible for the 
licensed liquor traffic in the nation, in the state, and in every 
community where it exists. It certainly is not the abstain- 
ing men who work and who vote against it. It cannot be 
the abstaining women, who for the most part, have no vote 
at all. Nor is it the little children who lift their baby 
hands to God and cry for protection. Who then is respon- 
sible? Those who use it, excuse it, vote for it, and do noth- 
ing against it. 

We are just now completing our struggle with the third 
stage of every reform. It is no longer ignored, nor is it 
denounced as false and pernicious. Most people admit that 
theoretically it is right, but many still claim that it is im- 
practicable of execution. 

A law is not an automatic thing, it can not enforce itself 
any more than a garden can weed itself. It would be as 
sensible to elect a liar to teach truth, a thief to teach hon- 
esty, a libertine to teach chastity, or the devil to preach 
the gospel, as to elect a whisky man and expect him to 
either formulate or to enforce temperance legislation. He 
will not do it. The history of the past, the demands of the 
present, and the necessities of the future all require that 
we shall place men in authority who have the courage, the 
inclination and the ability to do what they are paid and 
sworn to do. 

Prohibition has not had a fair trial in any state or in any 
portion of any state in the Union. For the most part the 
execution of these, laws have been in the hands of their 
enemies; the national government has continued to derive 
a revenue from all liquor manufactured or imported, and 
this of itself has given a certain legal respectability to the 
traffic, since it showed the national government to be in 



158 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

guilty complicity with it. Further, the national government 
has continued to issue federal tax receipts, which the hold- 
ers have commonly considered and used as license permits 
to sell liquor where both the local and the state laws have 
forbidden it. Again, under the shield of interstate com- 
merce, it can be, and is, shipped, in orginal packages, into - 
no-license territory, and as the law now stands states and 
communities are unable to pass laws to prevent this. It 
needs no argument to prove that it is wrong and disgrace- 
ful for the federal government to encourage law breaking 
as this does. 

Having gained the first three points, and we have gained 
them, if we shall fail in the fourth, that is to accept, adopt 
and apply, it will be the first instance, so far as I know, in 
history when any righteous reform, supported by the intel- 
ligence, the virtue, the learning, the labor, the love and the 
sacrifice of good people has ever failed. It will not fail, it 
can not fail, for ignorance and appetite and greed can not 
permanently stand against life and labor and love. 

As John G. Holland said of another matter: "As virtue is 
stronger than vice, as truth is stronger than falsehood, as 
love is stronger than hate, as God is stronger than all the 
powers of evil, so sure are we to win in this conflict." 

May each one of you as a Christian and a citizen do his 

or her part to speed the right and usher in the better day, 

and if we do then 

"The bells in unbuilded spires 
And the voices of unborn choirs" 

will pour forth their peans of praise. 



"REMEMBER THE ATHENIANS" 



By Miss Belle Kearney, of Mississippi. 

When Darius, King of Persia, heard that the Athenians 
and lonians had captured and destroyed Sardis, he had 
no fear of the latter, for he knew that they could soon be 
conquered; but he was very desirous of learning who the 
Athenians were. When those in authority related their 
history, the king turned his face toward heaven, and 
shooting an arrow strongly from his bow, he exclaimed: 
"Oh, supreme God, grant me that I may avenge myself 
on the Athenians." The Persian court was full of luxury, 
and the prospect of carrying war to the Greeks was 
not an inviting one, so, to hold him to his purpose, and 
keep his determination constantly in his mind, he made 
one of his servants stand by him daily, when he was at 
his meals, and say: "Sire, remember the Athenians." Un- 
der the influence of the great political excitement which 
has raged throughout our country for the past few years, 
many advocates of prohibition have lapsed into a state of 
deplorable inactivity. In the meantime, liquor has been 
shipped in quantities from county to county; the laws 
have been openly, boldly, impudently violated; young men 
have been drinking themselves into early graves and 
reformatories, and the old song of the rifted nest and the 
broken heart goes on. It is time to call a halt; at least to 
utter a note of warning. Mine, friends, is "Remember the 
Athenians," the liquor dealers, who never slumber nor 
grow weary, but keep eternal vigilance over the affairs of 
men to lead them to destruction. 

I have three charges to bring against local option: 

159 



160 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

First, it is unsound in principle. Second, it is delusive 
in theory. Third, it is disappointing in practice. 

The very term, local option, suggests license. In fact a 
local option law is nothing more nor less than a license 
law. License clothes the saloon business with the protec- 
tion of the courts and renders it the best paying invest- 
ment for capital. It establishes its commercial standing 
and gives it an air of respectability. It draws the liquor 
dealers of the state and nation into a mighty combination 
that constitutes the political and moneyed power of the 
land rendering it almost invincible. 

License is a permission, an authorization, a recommen- 
dation of good character of the holder that no other busi- 
ness man receives. Instead of a license being a brand of 
infamy, it is a certificate of honor which brings the pos- 
sessor into close relations with the government; it makes 
him a sort of agent or protege, conferring upon him espe- 
cial dignity. 

Liquor dealers are not slow to appreciate these advan- 
tages. The National Association of Distillers, organized in 
1886, declared in the first call they issued their purpose 
"to indorse the license system." Within the- last few years 
the president of the Liquor Dealers' Association of the 
United States said to his confederates: . "The two most 
effective weapons with which to fight the prohibitionists 
are high license and local option. The true policy for the 
trade to pursue is to advocate as high a license as they 
can, in justice to themselves, afford to pay." 

It has been decided long ago that the liquor traffic is 
inimical to the safety and welfare of a community; this 
being the case, it should be prohibited altogether, and not 
limited to a favored few who have the money and "char- 
acter" to settle the question of legality. The United States 
Supreme Court says: "There is no greater source of crime 
and suffering to society than the dramshop"; and, in 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 161 

consequence of this "there is no inherent right in a citizen 
of a state, or of the United States, to conduct one"; and 
that the creation of such "is a matter of legislative will 
only." 

Again, it says: "No legislature can bargain away the 
public health or public morals. The people themselves 
can not do it, 'much less their servants. Government is 
organized with a view to their preservation, and can not 
divest itself of the power to provide for ihem." According 
to this declaration, every license law that a legislature 
creates is a betrayal of the people's trust and a direct de- 
fiance of the opinion of the highest tribunal of this Re- 
public. If there ever was a bargaining away of "public 
health" and "public morals," it is when a license is 
granted to a man to destroy the peace of a community, 
rob it of its prosperity and debauch its manhood by the 
establishment of a dramshop. If there is no inherent right 
in an individual to commit the sin, surely no body of men, 
supposed to represent the people, should be allowed the 
privilege. 

The purpose of prohibition is not to restrain the personal 
habits of men or to reform them; but it is to protect 
society from the evil effects of drink. It is not a question 
of inherent right or wrong that determines whether a 
thing shall be prohibited or not, but the extent to which 
others have to suffer by it. A prohibitory law does not 
deal with the individual drunkard — that is left to the 
province of moral suasion — but its object is to save the 
state and nation from the burdens that follow in the train 
of the liquor traffic and to shield the defenseless victims of 
others' appetites — the women and children who are unable 
to shield themselves. 

Local option places the most helpless members of 
society entirely at the mercy of the voters of a community, 
a risky proceeding, to say the least, in this day of political 



162 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

corruption. A prime objection to local option is this very 
instability and uncertainty. One may feel secure in a 
prohibitory law this year under its provisions, but, in an 
election two years hence, the saloon may be enthroned. In 
these constantly recurring elections that the system ren- 
ders necessary, the counties are put to extra expense and 
the people taxed, in consequence, to bear it. 

Local option is delusive in theory, in that it persuades 
men that it is an educator of prohibition sentiment, when 
just the contrary is the fact. This is shown continually by 
counties that have been for years under its regime going 
back to the point from which they started by voting in 
large majorities for the re-establishment of the saloon. 
Instead of bringing the convictions of citizens concerning 
prohibition up to higher ideals, local option has a decided 
tendency to make them satisfied with what they have 
attained, producing a lethargy that is almost as deadly as 
opposition; or it fills their souls with such supreme dis- 
gust at its insufficiency as to alienate them entirely from 
prohibition, for which local option makes a show of stand- 
ing. 

Local option is delusive, for, instead of settling the ques- 
tion of prohibition, it causes an eternal fight in which the 
best portions of a community are brought to a face to face 
encounter with the lowest elements and subjected to their 
abuse and underhand dealings. If the votes of a certain 
number of unprincipled men can be bought or intimidated 
at an election by the liquor dealers, or a grand jury or 
board of supervisors suborned, the prohibitionists are as 
powerless to carry the day as a flock of white-winged 
pigeons. 

Local option is delusive by giving a seeming protection 
from the liquor traffic when there can be no protection 
while in a county adjoining the local option county the 
saloon is full-fledged and the liquor dealers alert to disturb 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 163 

the situation in the dry county; or, when all that is neces- 
sary is a walk over the boundary line or a shipment of 
liquor a few miles to flood the country and bring the name 
of prohibition into contempt and disgrace. Such measures 
cultivate the spirit of lawlessness in a people and train 
them in methods of duplicity. 

Local option is unsatisfactory in practice for the en- 
forcement of its provisions are nearly always left in the 
hands of officials who are either opposed to the law or 
indifferent to it. The consequence is blind tigers infest 
the country and no attempt is made to drive them from 
their lairs. Agents are allowed to enter a town and 
openly sell illicit liquors while the mayor and his brother 
officials look on quietly and smile approval without making 
the slightest effort to stop the influx. Young men hold 
high drinking carnivals, assaults are made and rioting 
indulged in, but an arrest is seldom attempted. All the 
while the enemies of prohibition triumph and grow more 
defiant in their violations and insolence. All the while so- 
called good men sit around inertly and discuss the mis- 
erable condition of affairs, lament the fact that prohibition 
is a failure and weakly admit that the saloon might as 
well be running in full blast, not once thinking it nec- 
essary to raise their voices in denunciation or lift their 
hands to crush out the unholy thing. If I were a man, I 
would be ashamed to occupy such a position. If the men 
of this country are unable to protect our homes by the 
enforcement of law, in the name of justice, give the women 
the ballot and let them have a chance at it! Some men 
are silent through cowardice, some through self-interest. 
The fear of losing a dollar is a terrible thought to the 
small souls of many — others through lack of energy and 
moral force. The man in politics will run no risk of losing 
popularity, for the saloon is the acknowledged headquarters 
for all political deals and jobberies. 



164 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

It is incredible to me that the friends of law and order 
would condescend for one moment to weigh in the balance 
the question whether it were better to have the blind tiger 
or the open saloon. The victory is almost won for prohibi- 
tion in certain states of our country. Why should there 
be a halting now between two such abominations? The 
intelligent portions of every community have acknowl- 
edged the justice and righteousness of prohibition and the 
sin and degradation of the liquor traffic. The Protestant 
churches of almost every denomination are largely with us 
in sympathy and the Catholics stand splendidly for total 
abstinence; so do philanthropic societies and associations 
of labor, professional and business men. The traffic has 
been driven into the darkest corners and the fight now, 
as a rule, is only with the lowest, most debauched, igno- 
rant, unprincipled members of society. Shall we accept 
the blind tiger or the open saloon? Neither! As long as 
there is a spark of conscience left to this nation or a shred 
of the majesty of its laws! It would be difficult to find 
two more demoralizing agencies with which to curse a peo- 
ple than a blind tiger or an open saloon. 

When there is a licensed grogshop in a community, it is 
a standing declaration that the majority of voting citizen? 
favor the liquor traffic; that it has as much right to exist 
as a dry goods house or a drug store. It is an admission 
on their part that the desire for intoxicants in the nature 
of old drinkers must be catered to and the like craving 
created and fostered in young boys who have not yet 
learned the lesson. It is assumed that alcoholic drinks are 
a necessity — an assumption that bodies of scientists in 
this country and Europe have declared to be false. 

The presence of a blind tiger in a community is evi- 
dence of the approval or indifference or cowardice of its 
citizens. There is no excuse whatever for the existence 
of a blind tiger, for it can be so easily exterminated. 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 165 

When it seems impossible to get witnesses to testify 
against the keeper of the unlawful institution, it will be 
found a convenient thing to employ a detective to spy out 
the hidings of the outlaw and bring him to justice along 
with his accomplices. However, the surest and speediest 
and most satisfactory solution of the blind tiger problem 
is the election of officers, both local and state, who have 
nerve and principle enough to institute a still hunt. 

For the sake of those brothers and sisters who are weak 
in the faith and hang on to the uncertainty of having to 
choose between the blind tiger and the open saloon I will 
try to prove that of the two curses the blind tiger is the 
lesser. It is easier to exterminate an evil that is under 
the ban of the law than one that is shielded by legal 
statutes. The blind tiger has been declared by our 
legislators a criminal and a price has been set upon his 
head; he is a sneakthief with no weapons for his de- 
fense but cunning and daring. He can be hounded down 
and torn to pieces and the law will say, "Amen!" 

The open saloon is a citizen with a guard of honor, the 
rock-ribbed and impenetrable fiats of the law about him, 
armed to the leeth to maintain his rights; any effort to 
break through the line of statutes is like striking one's 
head against a stone wall or falling upon naked swords. 
With an official document, stamped with the government's 
seal, giving the saloon the right to exist, no man can 
safely say, "Thou shalt not." The law steps in and with 
an imperious wave of the scepter cries, "Hands off!" 
The law has declared that the blind tiger is disreputable; 
it has robed the open saloon with garments of dignity and 
put a golden chain of honor about its neck. 

It is in this distinction that the law makes of honor and 
dishonor that is found a strong educative factor for the 
youth of our land. The laws of a country are the pulses 
that determine the condition of the body politic; they are 



166 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

the mainsprings that regulate the machinery of govern- 
ment; they are the conscience that impels to noble action 
or degrades the moral life. 

In the outlawry of the liquor traffic boys are taught that 
it has no right to exist; that it is an enemy to society; 
that it is a business fraught with peril and disgrace and 
they grow to look upon it with contempt. In the protec- 
tion that the law gives to the saloon, it assumes an air of 
respectability; the young become familiar with its as- 
sured position in business and in the estimation of the 
social world and are led to respect it; finally they de- 
fend it. 

The situations of respectability and non-respectability 
have their influence, not only with the young, but with the 
older people as well. There are few decent men who 
would patronize a blind tiger; they would scorn to enter 
an establishment that was run by an outlaw and was the 
rendezvous for all the toughs in the town or countryside, 
but, without the slightest hesitancy, these men would w r alk 
into an open saloon and calmly take their drinks at the 
bar before the eyes of any chance passerby, or inside vis- 
itor. Those who know nothing of the taste of alcoholic 
liquors are not likely to prowl around in forbidden cor- 
ners to cultivate an appetite. The open saloon is an ever- 
lasting enticement; there is the bland bartender, anxious 
for a talk: there is the odor of liquor in the nostrils, the 
sight of glasses, the tinkle of ice in summer and the steam 
of hot drinks in winter, all snares and pitfalls and death- 
traps. It seems to me that the argument for the salvation 
of the young should, alone, forever settle the question of 
the blind tiger and the open saloon. 

While traveling through the Alps in Switzerland I saw 
the dry, rocky bed of a river winding its sinuous way 
through the brilliant tints of a mountain side. The out- 
line was perfect. Underneath was the river flowing 



'WIXOXA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 167 

deep down into the rugged earth. At certain seasons its 
volume increases and it pours into its upper channel; but 
at all other times it is hidden, leaving only the outward 
evidence of its existence. The blind tiger is the unseen 
river; its rumblings are heard, but it is out of sight. The 
open saloon is the outward, raging stream carrying every- 
thing before its resistless sweep. As a young traveler 
going through the mountainous difficulties of life, I would 
infinitely prefer to walk over the dry, rocky bed of the 
hidden river of intemperance, rather than swim through 
its outward, dangerous floods. 

It is argued by some that the open saloon keeps down 
blind tigers as the saloonkeeper is jealous of his interests 
and would report any one who was running the business 
illegally, when he had paid the price for doing so. There 
is not one saloon in a hundred where the laws under 
which it is conducted are not violated; the blind tiger men 
have their eyes on them and the saloonists know it and 
they would not dare reveal the illegal liquor dealers for 
fear he would do the same to him. It is like two animals 
keeping each other at bay; or two robbers who have en- 
tered into collusion to protect each other's interests on 
the basis of mutual distrust; or two antagonists, appar- 
ently hating each other, but, in reality occupying the most 
amiable ground of comradeship. 

It is argued again that the quantity of liquor consumed 
would be lessened if there were only a few licensed sa- 
loons and the blind tigers closed; this has been proven 
long ago to be a deceit. One open saloon could sell as 
much liquor as fifty blind tigers and more — for it could 
be secured without fear of detection and dispensed under 
more inviting surroundings. 

The string upon which the advocates of the open saloon 
never tire of harping is that of license money. They in- 
sist that if the business is to be run at all, that the county 



168 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

and state should reap the benefits from it to which they 
are entitled by law. License money is the tightest ban- 
dage that was ever tied about the eyes of humanity. No 
county or state has ever been made richer by license 
money, but, on the contray, a thousand times poorer by 
the ravages of the saloons that are licensed. "Very well," 
you say, "let the license money pay for them;" but the 
license money would not begin to meet the demands; and, 
if it did, there would still be the loss to the common- 
wealth of brains and blood and work;' of citizenship, of 
honor, of homes, which are the foundation stones of all 
society. No amount of money on earth would compen- 
sate for the loss of such treasures. 

Licensing an evil for the money that is in it is like a 
man, who, in a railroad wreck, would save his hat and 
lose his life. There is no sound argument in the whole 
scale of moral or legal ethics that can justify the granting 
of a license for the sale of liquor to effect the ruin of the 
human family. 

The state, in licensing the liquor traffic, admits that it 
is a crime or it would not be restrained at all. A product 
may be taxed for revenue, as sugar, cloth or salt, and a 
license may be granted upon the same ground; but, if 
it is imposed for restraint, the situation assumes a new 
aspect. Restraint implies protection from a public evil; 
when license is granted the liquor traffic on that basis, 
the advocates of the saloon concede the principle and 
right of entire prohibition. 

The merchant and baker, lawyer, physician and others 
pay a license to ply their trades or practice their profes- 
sions; but the tax that is. levied on them is not to restrain 
their business but simply to secure revenue. They are 
regarded as blessings to mankind and make helpful re- 
turns for every dollar they receive from the public; but 
the liquor dealer, in taking a man's money, gives in ex- 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 169 

change, not clothes and bread, medicine and legal advice, 
hut a deadly decoction that will poison the life of the pur- 
chaser. The government, recognizing the difference, says 
in effect to the liquor dealer: "Your business is a 
curse and you must pay for it." A league of death is 
entered into, the articles of agreement being the souls of 
men for whom the Son of God endured the bloody sweat 
in Gethsemane and the agony of the cross on Calvary. 

The sore of the liquor traffic is a deep-seated one. Li- 
cense, high or low, is a salve that may soothe the inflam- 
mation, but it will never reach the root of the disease. 

With prohibitionists, the question is not so much the 
enforcement of law, as the maintenance of the vital prin- 
ciple underlying the law. 

A prohibitory law, even if not enforced, is better than 
licensing the saloon, for it teaches the lesson that the 
liquor traffic is not countenanced by law. It places the 
dramshop in the category of nuisances and the sale of 
liquor in the list of crimes. It strips every atom of re- 
spectability from the liquor dealer, and puts him in the 
position which he really occupies, whether in the blind 
tiger or the open saloon, and that is, a robber of wealth, a 
destroyer of peace, a despoiler of home, a grave-digger, a 
jail-keeper, a disease-infector! 

However nothing could be more serious or fraught with 
more unhappy consequences to a people than the constant 
disregard of law. The violation of its sanctity in one 
point, brings the whole system into discredit; the result 
of which is a nation of outlaws instead of patriots. 

The opponents of prohibition declare that men can't be 
compelled to do right against their will. That is equiva- 
lent to saying that every misdemeanor shall go unpun- 
ished; that laws against every crime shall be repealed, 
and an admission made that government is a failure. 

It is amusing to hear men talk about prohibitory law as 



170 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

an infringement of their personal liberty. I wonder if the 
Hebrews discussed an abrogation of their rights when 
Moses delivered to them the tablets of stone upon which 
God had written the eternal fiats: "Thou shalt not kill; 
Thou shalt not steal," and so on. The first law of crea- 
tion was that of order; the second of prohibition. Re- 
member the pronunciamento concerning the fruit of the 
tree of knowledge of good and evil: "Ye shall not eat of it, 
neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die." So it has been on 
down the ages, through all codes, civil and ecclesiastical. 

As a rule, the loudest criers for personal liberty are 
the men who most warmly favor license laws. If it is an 
invasion of personal liberty to prohibit the liquor traffic, 
according to the same logic, it is surely an invasion to 
restrict its sale. Restriction is only a mild form of pro- 
hibition. It is simply a question of degree. If it is an 
invasion of personal liberty to prohibit the sale of liquor, 
then it is an invasion of the inalienable rights of man to 
forbid him to commit murder, or larceny, to be guilty of 
forgery or perjury and the hundred and one other of- 
fenses that are now regarded as criminal. 

No man has a right to ruin the water supply of a town 
and poison the inhabitants; nor to burn up his neighbor's 
house, nor to manufacture counterfeit money. Man is 
hedged in on every side by prohibitory law. Why should 
he murmur when an effort is made to prohibit the liquor 
traffic which is, in itself, the deadliest foe to the rights of 
men for "life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happi- 
ness"? 

Arsenic, dynamite, powder, strychnine, aconite and 
prussic acid are prohibited for all uses except those that 
are of benefit to the world; alcohol is a chemical poison 
and should rank with these and be limited in the same 
way. 

No man has a personal right to ruin his body by drink 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 171 

or other means of debauchery; for, on spiritual grounds, 
he is not his own; he is "bought with a price"; physically, 
the seeds of disease germinated by drink are transmitted 
to his children whom he has no right to curse. 

Some time ago a lady friend and I were sitting in a 
railway station at a large city in the East, waiting for my 
train, when a boy seemingly about twelve years old, came 
ambling into the room. He gave every evidence of being 
feeble-minded. Turning to my friend, I asked: "What do 
you suppose was the cause of that poor child's 'condition?" 
"I happen to know his parents," she quickly replied. "His 
father was drunk for months before he was born." 

Soon after that I visited an institute for the feeble- 
minded in one of the Atlantic states. As the proprietor was 
showing me through the establishment he said: "Almost 
every boy and girl in this institution either had a father 
or a mother who was a drunkard, or a grandmother, or a 
grandfather, or a great-grandmother, or a great-grand- 
father." 

As surely as insanity or scrofula or consumption and 
other hereditary diseases are transmitted through the 
generations, just so surely will the love for liquor, or the 
weakness for tobacco, or the tendency toward impurity be 
handed down. Ah, gentlemen, I don't know what you 
think about it, but I insist that the most cowardly thing in 
all the world is to curse an unborn child. 

Legally, a man belongs to the state as a citizen and has 
no right to defraud it of the increment of service he 
should render. Drinking intoxicating liquor is a sure 
process of suicide. No man has a right to take his life; 
in the sight of God and of men he is as complete a mur- 
derer as if he had taken another man's life. 

A great deal of soft sentimentality has been bestowed 
upon" drunkards. I think they should be dealt with as 
other incapables. As long as the state makes drunkards, 



172 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

it should be forced in the name of common justice to take 
care of them. No man has a right to become a burden to 
those who are bound to him by ties of blood that are in- 
dissoluble. Men often claim that they have a right to 
drink because they injure nobody but themselves. There 
was never a drunkard on earth who has not been the di- 
rect cause of misery either to persons connected with 
him, or to society at large. 

No man can live to himself. Humanity is socialistic and 
interdependent in its homogenity; what affects one, affects 
all. For the wreck of every drunkard in this land, there 
is, in almost every case, the wreck of a woman's happiness 
to accompany it; but that is usually regarded as a very 
small thing; the world thinks there is no philosophy in it 
and shrugs its shoulders at the mention of a woman's 
sorrow. 

In every sob that issues from the broken hearts of the 
women of this country, there is not only a rebuke to the 
manhood of this land, but volumes of unwritten laws 
which will as surely be summed up as there is a God to 
pity and to save. In the wail of every helpless child that 
has received its death-hurt at the hands of the liquor 
traffic there is a protest, an entreaty that the divine sense 
of justice, slumbering in the conscience of this nation, 
will some day heed. 

When I was going through the Luray cavern in Virginia, 
that marvelous place with its sleeping waters and fairy 
creations of form and color, our conductor stopped us at 
a certain point, and going down several steps until he 
reached a level space, he took a little instrument made of 
wood and tipped with steel out of his pocket and striking 
upon the different ledges of rock that projected in front of 
him produced, to our infinite amazement, the tender, fa- 
miliar strains of "Nearer, My God, To Thee." Nature 
is not more full of surprises than the human heart. 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 173 

Locked in its deep recesses are the mighty forces which 
make for righteousness and which, some day, will wake 
to life and action and bring this old world of ours back 
to the blessed state of equilibrium that it enjoyed when 
first it issued from the workshop of its Maker. 

The voice of God sings in the soul of every man; its 
melodies are often muffled, but when the right keys are 
touched by the master hand, the harmonies ring out un- 
mistakably. 

Going back to the question of personal liberty, if nobody 
was injured by the liquor traffic except the man who 
drinks, has he a right to insist that the saloon shall con- 
tinue just to supply him with his grog? This is as reason- 
able and consistent as the claim of the man who says that 
he has a right to drink and the saloon to exist because 
Christ made wine at a marriage in Cana, of Galilee, over 
eighteen hundred years ago. To carry out the personal 
liberty argument to its logical conclusion, no restriction of 
the liquor traffic should be countenanced, but the reins 
given entirely to free rum. 

About fifty years ago, two of the most eminent jurists in 
America, Daniel Webster and Rufus Choate, were hired by 
the liquor dealers to go before the Supreme Court of the 
United States and try to convince those learned judges 
that the personal liberty of individuals and the inalienable 
rights of the Declaration of Independence were endan- 
gered by the prohibition of the liquor traffic; but they 
failed completely. Forty years later, Joseph H. Choate 
was employed by the liquor dealers for the same purpose, 
but he, too, failed. The Supreme Court, regardless of 
the elaborate argument to which they had been subjected, 
made this declaration: "Nor can it be said that govern- 
ment interferes with or impairs any one's constitutional 
rights of liberty or property when it determines that the 
manufacture and sale of intoxicating drinks for general 



174 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

or individual use as a beverage are or may become hurtful 
to society and to every member of it, and is therefore a 
business in which no on may lawfully engage." This is 
the legal ultimatum. All unprejudiced minds have long 
since accepted the moral. 

As a substitute for local option, with all of its unhappy 
consequences and unrest, I want to urge upon the people 
of the different commonwealths the adoption of prohibi- 
tion by an amendment to their constitutions, forbidding 
the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors for bev- 
erage purposes within the borders of the states. As every 
one knows, in order to secure an amendment to a state 
constitution it is necessary that a bill looking to that 
effect shall first pass both houses of the legislature, be 
signed by the Governor and then be submitted to the peo- 
ple for ratification, two-thirds of the votes cast being nec- 
essary to carry the measures. This seems a formidable 
undertaking, but, with the high degree of prohibition sen- 
timent that exists in so many states and after securing 
such strong restrictive statutes from- their legislatures in 
the past, with a sufficient amount of agitation of the sub- 
ject, it could be carried. Such is my faith in the loyalty 
and intelligence of our people; but, even if we failed to 
secure the amendment, the educative power of such a 
movement would be of inestimable value. 

If we obtain constitutional prohibition we shall be 
through forever with all the agonizing uncertainties of 
local option elections, the heavy expenses consequent to 
them, and all the other miseries that attend the system, 
until some future legislature shall see proper to repeal 
the prohibitory law and the people give their consent to it. 
This will never be done if the prohibitionists throughout 
the states look to their laurels and see that the law is 
obeyed and keep alive the sentiment which caused its cre- 
ation and which is necessary in every reformation to 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 175 

assure its success and continuance. States have a right 
to legislate on the question of prohibition even to the 
extent of abolishing the liquor traffic altogether. 

Senator Fry, in a letter to the Ghicago Advance, in 1874, 
said, in reference to the constitutional prohibitory law of 
of the state of Maine: "When the law was enacted I have 
no doubt two-thirds of the people were at heart opposed 
to it; now they could not be induced to repeal it." It has 
been proven that he was right in his supposition. After 
more than fifty years of trial, the state legislature of 
Maine, on a motion to repeal the law, defeated the pro- 
posal by a large majority. Maine has stood unshaken in 
the magnificent stand it took over a half century ago; 
what it has done, other states can do also. The only 
thing that ever hinders the fulfilment of constitutional 
prohibition is the lack of conviction in the masses, the 
busy machinations of unscrupulous politicians and the 
election of officers who are not in sympathy with the 
measure. This has been the case with all those states 
that once had constitutional prohibition and afterward 
lost it. 

"But," the objectors urge, "there will be as many viola- 
tions of the law under constitutional prohibition as there 
are now under high license and local option, for men will 
have their liquor under any conditions." Doubtless, as 
long as so little attention is paid to the enforcement of 
law as now prevails; but the friends of prohibition will 
have the blessed satisfaction of knowing that they have 
given to the people the strongest protection from the 
liquor traffic which civil statutes can provide and brought 
their ideas concerning prohibitory law up to higher stand- 
ards. In all states where constitutional prohibition has 
prevailed for even a short time, it has been proven that 
drinking decreased immeasurably and that there was a 
corresponding decrease in poverty and crime. 



176 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

There are thousands of men who would take their grog 
if they could secure it by the drink, but who are not able 
to order their liquor in quantities; these men and their 
families are saved, but we realize fully that those who are 
accustomed to drinking and are able to pay for their 
liquor at any price will have it as long as it is manufac- 
tured. From this fact arises the necessity of taking a step 
farther than state prohibition, and calling on Congress to 
exercise the absolute power that it possesses to prohibit 
the manufacture and sale of liquor in the territories and 
in the District of Columbia, as it has already done in all 
forts, arsenals and military posts under Federal govern- 
ment; to stop the shipment of liquor from state to state, 
and the importation of liquor from foreign countries. 
When this is done the next thing will be to secure an 
amendment to the national constitution prohibiting the 
manufacture and sale of liquors in all of the states of the 
Union. 

From the very beginning the Federal government has 
been the strong ally of the liquor traffic. The constitution 
of the United States, by the protection it gives the busi- 
ness, directly antagonizes the prohibitory laws of the sev- 
eral states, rendering their enforcement almost an impos- 
sibility; thus violating those very rights so dear to the 
hearts of Southern people that they were willing once to 
enter into a Confederacy to maintain them, to secede from 
the Union to justfy them, and to fight for four long years 
to establish them. 

We have never had a full prohibitory law and never 
shall have until Congress unites with the people to secure 
one. Constitutional prohibition for the states is the most 
effective stepping-stone to the ultimate goal of national 
prohibition, which is within our reach and should be util- 
ized to the farthest extent. The idea for all who have 
the best interests of the prohibition cause at heart is to 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 177 

work for the measure that promises to yield the largest 
return of peace and safety to the people. 

My mother was the most intensely prejudiced woman 
against the North that I ever knew, and that is saying a 
good deal; for if one had visited the Southern states dur- 
ing the years immediately following the close of the civil 
war, he would have found many other women occupying 
positions closely similar to hers. Father fought for sev- 
eral years as a Colonel in the Confederacy; but when he 
came back to his plantation home, hurt near unto death 
going to the siege of Vicksburg, he brought with him an 
intense admiration for his opponents. He said that no- 
bler, braver men never walked than those who had en- 
listed in the Union army. 

It was different with my mother. 'She never saw the 
federal troops, except when they marched by her front 
gate; and she always insisted that the Northern soldiers 
had gone down into the South without having the slightest 
shadow of an excuse for doing such a thing, and had 
robbed her of her immense wealth, which consisted en- 
tirely of slaves and plantations; and, as the years went 
by, instead of her bitterness growing less, it seemed to 
deepen in its intensity. 

As the decades passed God sent Frances E. Willard into 
the Southern states, and she accomplished what Grant 
and the other Federal generals, with all their legions, 
failed to accomplish, and that was to conquer Southern 
women. They thought that she was the most exquisite 
soul they had ever known — and they were right — for she 
was; but my dear mother stood out against Frances Wil- 
lard. 

Eventually the call for service to humanity came very 
definitely to me and I stepped out from that old environ- 
ment of narrowness and prejudice, but of perfect comfort 
and extreme happiness, I can assure you, into the unpop- 



178 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

ular temperance work for my Lord's sake. I began to go 
into the far North and there I received the most royal 
hospitality; there the most loving, gracious kindness was 
bestowed upon me; there such devoted, worshipful friends 
were given me that I never dreamed it possible to have. 
When I wrote to mother about it all — the love, the tender- 
ness, the magnanimity enveloped in that splendid recep- 
tion — then it was that she, too, surrendered; then it was 
that my mother experienced a full forgiveness in her 
heart toward the North. 

A few years ago I went from Boston to Mississippi 
and carried with me a copy of the life of Wendell Phillips. 
Soon after my arrival at the old plantation home, I said 
to mother: "It is true that you are seventy and I am some- 
what younger; but your eyes are strong and undimmed, 
while I can never see to study after the dusk deepens; so 
you will have to read to me this biography of Wendell 
Phillips." "You must never forget, my daughter," she 
replied, "that we of the South do not wish to know any 
more about Wendell Phillips than those things which 
were thrust upon us in the years preceding the horrible 
struggle between the states." "Surely," I persisted, "sure- 
ly, mother, you would not hesitate to read to me anything 
that I desired, would you? When you realize that I can 
not read for myself at night?" Relenting graciously she 
said: "The word of my daughter has always been law in 
our household, and if she desires me to read to her the life 
of the famous anti-slavery agitator, it shall be done." 

Consequently, evening after evening, my mother and I 
would sit close together in her large, old-fashioned room, 
before an immense, open fireplace and she would read to 
me the life of Wendell Phillips. As we proceeded she 
would be filled with indignation over the infamous epi- 
thets that were bestowed upon Southern people. Finally 
she exclaimed: "What right has this author to call us 



. 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 179 

'negro-beaters' and 'slave-whippers' and other abominable 
things? Who ever heard of negroes being beaten upon 
Southern plantations in ante-bellum days? No slaves 
were ever whipped upon your father's plantations nor 
upon mine; no negroes were ever beaten upon the plan- 
tations of your relatives, and they owned nearly all of this 
part, of the country and were every one slaveholders, and 
their ancestors had been ever since the establishment of 
slavery in America." "Well, mother," I replied calmly, 
"all that you have said is probably true — for you and 
father and our relatives were Christians — some of them in 
the ministry — but how do you know what went on between 
the slaves and the overseers when you were absent from 
the plantations?" As everybody knows, slaveholders lived 
like grandees, and were upon the plantations usually only 
in the spring and fall — at other seasons they were travel- 
ing in this country or in Europe. "How do you know 
what went on between the slaves and the overseers in 
your absence?" I repeated. "Now, mother," I continued, 
"since I have been in the fighting ranks of one reforma- 
tion, I have looked into others. In my visits to the homes 
of hundreds of Southern people, I have had men and wom- 
en of undoubted honesty of character, from one end of 
the South to the other, to tell me that every infamy which 
was ever written or said or dreamed about slavery was 
true." 

As we read along, a recognition of the injustice of the 
institution seemed to sink into my mother's consciousness 
for the first time, and when the book was closed she said, 
with a deep shudder: "Oh, wasn't slavery a horrible 
thing!" Some day, some hour, when prohibition shall 
stretch its white wings from ocean to ocean over this 
great continent of ours — some day, when the legalized 
dramshop shall be driven to a death that knows no resur- 
rection, you will find men and women who now stand for 



180 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

the saloon, begin to say: "Oh, is it possible that our civ- 
ilization was ever so low as to permit a legalized dram- 
shop to exist in any community? Oh, can it be true that 
men were ever such brutes as to drink themselves into a 
state of drunkenness, and hand down their thirst for 
liquor to the little children yet unborn?" Then you will 
hear these same women and men saying, with a deep 
shudder: "Oh, wasn't the liquor traffic a horrible thing?" 
It's coming! Please God, it is coming! And those of us 
who are climbing the mountain heights, with tired feet 
and aching hearts, are even now catching glimpses of the 
rosy day-dawn sure to be! 

Constantly we hear that the temperance question is one 
which should be settled by moral suasion; that it should 
be left to the ministers and lecturers, to the homes and 
schools and philanthropic societies. We may pray and 
talk, preach and teach our doctrines forever, but it is only 
at the ballot-box that those doctrines will be noticed ma- 
terially or crystallized into enduring form. Moral suasion 
is well enough for the drunkard, but it is the saloon back 
of the man which makes him a drunkard that we are try- 
ing to reach. Reformers have long since realized the 
utter inutility of moral suasion that is not backed by legal 
statutes. 

Ministers are coming down from their lofty pinnacles in 
the rarified regions of moral suasion, and are going in for 
a hand-to-hand encounter with the liquor traffic, using the 
ballot-box as a threshing machine; lecturers feel that 
they are "wasting their sweetness on the desert air" in 
proclaiming the virtues of total abstinence, and begging 
persons to sign the pledge, while the dramshop stands to 
render all their utterances null and void; so, they are 
leaving the field of moral suasion and are concentrating 
the powers of their logic and eloquence upon the strong- 
holds of legislation, magnifying the potency of the ballot- 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 1S1 

box as a lever to lift the world; women have grown weary 
in the struggle to effect the reformation of the individual 
and the salvation of communities by moral suasion, and 
have been led to see that their work will be as nothing 
until their convictions find expression at the ballot-box. 

Home training and school teaching and philanthropic 
enterprises are the very props and stays of humanity, but 
the principles inculcated by these beneficent forces are as 
ropes of sand unless they are rooted and grounded in the 
spirit of our laws. 

The safety of a people depends upon the inviolable 
sanctity of the ballot-box. Every act of fraud perpetrated 
there is a crime against the state; every vote cast that 
does not mean the protection of the home is a sin against 
the home; every ballot that is bought or intimidated is an 
insult to manhood. 

When the Greeks were holding their council of war, pre- 
vious to the battle of Marathon, "the votes of the gener- 
als" stood five for and five against engaging. It was left 
to Calimaehus to decide, perhaps, not only the fate of 
Athens, but that of all the nations of the earth. He real- 
ized the gravity of the situation and settled the question 
in favor of making a stroke for the independence of his 
country. 

Every man who enjoys the precious privilege of the 
elective franchise should vote at every election with as 
much seriousness as if it devolved upon him to decide the 
destiny of the human race. It is only this feeling of per- 
sonal responsibility that strengthens character, develops 
power and gives to the world a patriot. 

Republican institutions have discovered the individual. 
The idea so often given has been: It is the man back of 
the artillery that gains the military victories. It is the 
man behind the fleet that conquers in a naval engagement. 
It is the man behind science that has made steam and 



182 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

electricity the wonders of the age. It is the man back of 
all law and theology and philanthropy that has pushed hu- 
manity to its present height. 

Emerson says: ''Every true man is a cause, a country 
and an age." The American, in the potency of his indi- 
viduality, has made America what it is. Back of our 
splendid institutions, it is the man and woman of this 
nation, as units, who are its glory. 

When the individual takes hold of a great truth and 
his heart and brain and will become possessed of the ne- 
cessity for its triumph, then comes revolution. 

To gain the final victory for our cause, we must satur- 
ate the individual conscience of the voters of this country 
with the chemical of enthusiasm for righteousness; the 
ballot-box to be the point where that enthusiasm shall be 
transformed into positive expression by the election . of 
good men to office who will create laws to annihilate the 
liquor traffic. The difficulty with the world is that princi- 
ple is so faintly tinted and so easy to change its hue. 

Once when nearing the shores of England I saw a num- 
ber of beautiful little vessels with crimson sails floating 
on the water. I was told that the sailors dyed their can- 
vas with tanbark to make them strong. 

If our convictions were dyed and strengthened with the 
tanbark of God's eternal truth, there would be no wind of 
opposition fierce enough to drive us from our course nor 
sun-heat of iniquity great enough to fade the color of our 
purpose. In reference to woman and the ballot, I desire, 
especially, to speak today. 

Facts are more convincing than argument and more elo- 
quent than fine rhetoric. In Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho 
and Utah women have received full enfranchisement. For 
thirty-eight years the women of Wyoming have been 
voting upon equal terms with men. Fourteen years ago 
full suffrage was bestowed upon the women of Colorado. 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 183 

Eleven years ago, the right to vote without limitation, was 
given to the women of Idaho and Utah. The women of 
Kansas have had municipal suffrage for twenty years. In 
twenty-two states school suffrage has been granted to 
women. As early as 1838 Kentucky took the initiative in 
the bestowment of this form of franchise. Twenty years 
ago a law was passed in Montana allowing all tax-paying 
women in that commonwealth to vote upon all questions 
submitted to the taxpayers. Nine years ago the women of 
Louisiana were granted the same right. Thirteen years 
ago Iowa women were given bond suffrage. Just four 
years ago Kansas bestowed it upon the women of that 
state. Minnesota, in 1888, gave the women within its 
borders the right to cast their ballots for library trustees. 
Six years ago New York State empowered women in all its 
towns and villages to vote on questions connected with 
local taxation. 

In Finland and New Zealand women have full suffrage. 
In Australia women have unlimited franchise, except in 
Victoria, where women are not allowed to vote for mem- 
bers of their states parliaments, although permitted to 
cast their ballots in all their elections, even those for 
members of the National Assembly. The 800,000 women 
of Australia may be elected to parliament and hold any 
elective national office. Tasmania gave women full suf- 
frage in 1903, and Queenland in 1905. The gift of com- 
plete suffrage rights came to the women of New Zealand 
fourteen years ago, that of national suffrage to the women 
of Federated Australia five years ago, and only last year 
the women of Finland received unlimited political free- 
dom, the bill giving them this right, and the eligibility to 
hold any office, having been signed by the Czar of Russia. 
For twenty-seven years the women of the Isle of Man 
have had full suffrage. The women of Canada and Great 
Britain have municipal suffrage. A strong demand is 



184 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

being made in England on the part of women for the ex- 
tension of their franchise rights. Petitions have been 
presented to the House of Commons signed by 73,384 
women textile workers, and 132 trades and labor unions, 
representing more than 100,000 women workers. Recently 
257,000 women, representing all grades of society, signed 
a petition which was presented to the British Parliament. 
In every city of the world where English is the national 
language, women vote, except in America, where they 
have that privilege to an unlimited degree only in four 
states, and municipally but in one. All told, there are at 
least a million and a quarter of English speaking women 
in different countries who have received full enfranchise- 
ment. Municipal suffrage was given to the women of 
Sweden forty-five years ago, and the women of New South 
Wales came into that right only five years later, but they 
now enjoy full state suffrage. Twenty-six years ago Ice- 
land gave the right to vote for parish and town councils, 
district boards and vestries to single women and widows, 
and twenty-one years later made women eligible to these 
offices. In 1893 when full suffrage was granted, both to 
Colorado and New Zealand, the women of Denmark got 
church suffrage, and in 1895 the right was obtained to vote 
for councillors. Two years later the women of Norway 
were given the privilege of voting on certain church mat- 
ters, and afterward secured municipal suffrage. Nine 
years ago the women of France, who were engaged in 
commerce were honored by being allowed to vote for the 
tribunals of commerce. A new organization, known as 
the Group for the Defense of Rights of Women, has been 
formed in the French Chamber of Deputies, composed en- 
tirely of members of the national parliament of France. 
Twc< years ago, municipal suffrage was given to the wom- 
en of Natal, South Africa. In 1906 a national woman suf- 
frage organization with a membership of 10,000 was 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 185 

formed in Russia, also national unions in Italy and Hun- 
gary. Recently the 4,000 students and professors of the 
University of St. Petersburg unanimously voted in favor 
of woman suffrage; so did a number of other bodies com- 
posed of influential Russians. Last year it was decided by 
the Court of Appeals at Aneona that the women of Italy 
have the right to vote in all elections. Influenced by this 
act the Court of Appeal of Florence decreed that the 
names of all women who make application shall be placed 
on the list of voters. The highest court has not yet ren- 
dered a decision. In 1904 at Berlin, Germany, the Interna- 
tional Woman Suffrage Alliance was formed with seven 
National Suffrage Associations auxiliary to it. Since then 
Federated Australia has entered. Within the past few 
years suffrage organizations have been effected in Austria. 

Women could not vote anywhere on the globe seventy 
years ago, except in Sweden, and in a few other countries 
in the old world, and there only to a very limited degree. 
Lately five out of the six political parties in California put 
woman suffrage planks in their state platforms. In 1904, 
in Illinois, three of the four largest political parties in the 
state not merely acknowledged, but approved, the rights 
of women to the ballot. The National Grange has re- 
cently unanimously declared for woman suffrage and the 
American Federation of Labor, in its endorsement had 
only one dissenting vote. In the movement in Chicago to 
place a clause for municipal woman suffrage in the new 
charter, eighty-seven organizations with an aggregate 
membership of 10,000 women petitioned the measure. 
Thousands of unorganized women did the same, and men 
and women generally, who support the moral forces of 
that great city, stood splendidly for it. Of the sixty-seven 
opinions expressed upon the subject of woman suffrage by 
mayors of the leading towns in Illinois, sixty-two were in 
favor. Nine-tenths of three hundred lawyers and judges 



186 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

of the state declared their approbation of the extension of 
the elective franchise to women. Letters sent out to the 
mayors of Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Kansas, 
the five states where women have municipal suffrage, ask- 
ing their opinions of its workings and results, the replies 
were practically unanimous in support of woman suffrage. 
The report of the Commission of Education for 1902 states 
that in the year previous there were 92,562 more girls than 
boys in attendance, and 18,330 more girls than boys were 
graduated in the public schools of the United States, and 
that there were 1,494 more girls than boys who graduated 
with the intention of entering college. According to the 
report for 1901, in the twelve years between 1889 and 1901, 
the women who had graduated from our colleges and uni- 
versities have increased from 195.1 per cent., while the in- 
crease of men graduates was only 60.6 per cent. Statistics 
for 1903 show that there were in the United States 6,474 
women studying in women's colleges, and 24,862 women 
in co-educational. Calculating the vote of increase upon 
this basis, there are now in this country 38,268 college 
women students. Dr. M. Cary Thomas, the able woman 
who is president of Bryn Mawr, and a suffragist, says: 
"Although there are in the United States nearly 1,800,000 
less women than men, women already constitute consid- 
erably over one-third of the entire student body, and are 
steadily gaining on men. This means that in another gen- 
eration or two, one-half of all the people who have been to 
college in the United States will be women." 

Colleges in America were open to women only about a 
generation ago. From the census of 1900 we learn that 
there were in the United States 117,362 more illiterate 
males than females between the ages of ten and twenty- 
one, the school age. If both men and women between the 
ages of twenty-one and twenty-four had been permitted to 
vote in 1900, there would have been 20,000 fewer illiterate 



WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 187 

women than men who would have cast their first ballot 
for President of the United States. If this disparity con- 
tinues during the next two decades, and women are still 
disfranchised, some one wisely observes that the anomaly 
will be presented of the more intelligent sex having laws 
made for them by the more illiterate. When it comes to 
a question of moral reckoning, the difference is also great. 
The following statistics, minus fractions, were given in 
the United States census of 1890, relative to men and 
women in the state prisons: 

In the District of Columbia women constitute 17 per 
cent, of the prisoners; in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, 
14 per cent.; in New York, 13; in Louisiana, 12; in Vir- 
ginia, 11; in New Jersey, 10; in Pennsylvania and Mary- 
land, 9; in Connecticut, 8; in Alabama, New Hampshire, 
Ohio and South Carolina, 7; in Florida, Maine, Mississippi, 
New Mexico and Tennessee, 6; in Georgia, Illinois, Indi- 
ana, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina and 
West Virginia, 5; in Arkansas and Delaware, 4; in Cali- 
fornia, Minnesota, North Dakota, Texas and Vermont, 3; 
in Colorado, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska and Utah, 2; in 
Arizona, Kansas, Nevada and South Dakota, 1; in Wash- 
ington, four-fifths of 1 per cent.; in Oregon and Wiscon- 
sin, two-fifths of 1 per cent.; in Wyoming and Idaho, none. 

Last year there were nearly three times more men than 
women who committed suicide in the United States. 
Women are vastly in the majority in the churches and in 
all movements which stand for the uplift of humanity. If 
women were enfranchised, the forces representative of the 
best civilization would preponderate enormously at the 
polls. In all countries combined, where women have been 
permitted to vote, authorities state that there have not 
been found twelve respectable men who would declare 
over their own signatures and addresses that woman suf- 
frage had produced any evil effect. Do not the women of 



188 WINONA TEMPERANCE ADDRESSES 

this state measure up in patriotism, in intelligence, in 
honesty of character, in devotion to home with the women 
of Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, U x ah, Finland, New Zea- 
land, Australia and other lands where women have been 
enfranchised? If so, should they not be honored by hav- 
ing the right of suffrage bestowed upon them in equal 
dignity. 




ttuma 



IBAg'fQ 



